“ He made rapid progress, especially in mathematics, and began to assist the master. In 1772 he was apprenticed to a shoemaker, and when he wished to pursue his mathematical studies, he was obliged to work his problems with an awl on beaten leather. ”

“ His bitter opposition to Radicals and his onslaughts on new writers, conspicuous among which was the article on Keats’s Endymion, called forth Hazlitt’s Letter to W. Gifford in 1819. His connexion with the Review continued until within about two years of his death, which took place in London on the 31st of December 1826. Besides numerous contributions to the Quarterly during the last fifteen years of his life, he wrote a metrical translation of Persius, which appeared in 1821. Gifford also edited the dramas of Ben Jonson in 1816, and his edition of Ford appeared posthumously in 1827. ”