Henri Giffard

“ As Giffard stood trembling, while he relieved his Lord from this hapless burthen, her father had to unloose her hand from the side of his coat, which she had caught fast hold of as she fell, and grasped so closely, it was with difficulty released.--On attempting to take the hand away he trembled--faltered--then bade Giffard do it.
"Who, I, my Lord! I separate you!" cried he. But recollecting himself, "My Lord, I will obey your commands whatever they are." And seizing her hand, pulled it with violence--it fell--and her father went away. ”

“ This was made a cause of complaint against him at Rome, for it was alleged that Godfrey was only in minor orders, and was not learned (ib.) . Giffard was active in discharging the duties of his office, and was a ‘strict and fearless reformer of abuses’ (ib.) He made a visitation of his province, and came to Durham during a vacancy in the see; the prior of St. Cuthbert's endeavoured to distract him by a rich entertainment. ”

“ A strong man may go for years without the great adventure of life befalling him. He may have cantered through his boyish escapades, gone love-sick for a week, or passed some face that seemed fair to him and then forgotten it. But when the real flare comes, it is fire of another sort, and the bigger the man's heart, the bigger the furnace.
So it befell with John Giffard. Gilimer Pool, with its brown woodland water, became a lure to him, and he saw it agleam with the glory of a woman's hair. ”

“ The deer had no lord those days. The forest held a thing that was more wonderful, more to be desired. John Giffard would be out before dawn, following the brown glimmer of the Gilimer Brook where it ran under the oaks and beeches of the Black Vale. He was an unseen warden, an invisible pilgrim, for his love was a watching and a great silence. He never showed himself to Judith Pendrell, but he was there along the yews, seeing but unseen. ”

“ He had brought his own bow with him, and he strung it, ready. There was the sound ot some big thing galloping, and Giffard saw a hart royal come up the glade and pass the tree where Judith lay hidden. She let the hart go by and loosed no bolt at it.
Giffard rose to his knees. If she had let the hart go by, was she waiting for the man who hunted it?
The hounds appeared, running in a bunch, with a fierce old dog leading them. They passed, and the noise of their padding feet was followed by the galloping of a horse. Giffard knew Fulk de Corbil's ways. ”

“ GIFFARD, Sir AMBROSE HARDINGE (1771–1827) , chief justice of Ceylon, eldest son of John Giffard (1745-1819) , high sheriff of Dublin in 1794, accountant-general of customs in Dublin, and a prominent loyalist, was born at Dublin in 1771. His mother was Sarah, daughter of William Norton, esq., of Ballynaclash, co. Wexford. The Giffards were an ancient Devonshire family; but the grandfather of the chief justice, who was the disinherited grandson of John Giffard of Brightleigh, settled in Ireland. ”

“ Nor is it on record that Fulk de Corbil was ever found. The forest folk believed that someone had slain him in the forest, and they had hated him enough to let well alone.
But they spun many tales about John Giffard and his lady. Some said she was a lord's daughter who had fled away disguised as a leper, because some lord would have married her by force, and John Giffard had caught his mate.
Mat of the Moor would roll his head from side to side and cross himself when he told how he had once shot an arrow at John Giffard's lady, taking her for a ghost. ”

“ Therein he bequeathed to Lord-keeper Sir Thomas Egerton ‘the Jewell wherein the Quenes maties picture is which he vsed to weare aboutes his necke.’ He possessed lands in the county of Durham and a lease of the farm of Tollesbury in Essex. By his wife Frances, who survived him, he had a son Thomas, a daughter Mary, another daughter married to Thomas Harries, and probably other children. Giffard was a man of wide culture, well read in French, Italian, and Flemish literature. ”

“ Giffard is constantly described as a valiant and skilful soldier and a prudent and discreet man (cf. ‘The Song of the Barons,’ Wright, Political Songs, p. 59) . In 1283 he had founded Gloucester Hall (now Worcester College) outside the walls at Oxford, and made provision for the sustenance there of thirteen Benedictine students. His son John, by a third wife, took part with Thomas of Lancaster in the next reign, and was attainted and executed in 1322, when his castle of Bromsfield was destroyed. ”

“ He was one of the bishops elect whom Anselm refused to consecrate (1101) as having been nominated and invested by the lay power. During the investitures dispute Giffard was on friendly terms with Anselm, and drew upon himself a sentence of banishment through declining to accept consecration from the archbishop of York (1103) . He was, however, one of the bishops who pressed Anselm, in 1106, to give way to the king. ”

“ Such doubts were laid to rest before the government went out of office in January 1886. From the first Giffard took command, as much as a president should, of any court over which he presided. He was strong enough to be primus inter pares whoever his peers might be, and they included at different times Lords Selborne, Watson, Blackburn, Bramwell, Herschell, Davey, Bowen, Macnaghten, and Robertson. On his appointment he took the title of Baron Halsbury, of Halsbury, in the parish of Parkham, Devon, one of the former seats of the Giffard family. ”

“ Gen. p. 172) , an order to surrender some lands which he had occupied, alienated him from Montfort. Giffard now attached himself to Gilbert de Clare, whom he appears to have influenced in taking up the royalist cause (Ann. Lond. Rolls Series, ii. 67) . ”

“ GIFFARD, ROGER, M.D. (d. 1597) , president of the College of Physicians, was the son of Ralph Giffard of Steeple Claydon, Buckinghamshire, by his wife Mary, daughter of Sir Edward Chamberlain of Woodstock, Oxfordshire. He was educated at Merton College, Oxford, of which house he became a fellow, and took the degree of B.A. on 14 Aug. ”

“ GIFFARD, GODFREY (c. 1235–1302) ; chancellor of England and bishop of Worcester, was a son of Hugh Giffard of Boyton, Wiltshire. Having entered the church he speedily obtained valuable preferments owing to the influence of his brother Walter, who became chancellor of England in 1265. In 1266 Godfrey became chancellor of the exchequer, succeeding Walter as chancellor of England when, in the same year, the latter was made archbishop of York. In 1268 he was chosen bishop of Worcester, resigning the chancellorship shortly afterwards ”

“ Our first difference arose on that election, but never proceeded to any degree of hostility.
Giffard was originally an apothecary. When I was at the Dublin University, the students were wild and lawless:—any offence to one was considered as an offence to all; and as the elder sons of most men of rank and fortune in Ireland were then educated in Dublin College, it was dangerous to meddle with so powerful a set of students, who consequently did precisely what they chose (outside the college-gates) . ”

“ GIFFARD, BONAVENTURE, D.D. (1642–1734) , Roman catholic bishop, and president of Magdalen College, Oxford, second son of Andrew Giffard of Chillington, in the parish of Brewood, Staffordshire, by Catherine, daughter of Sir Walter Leveson, was born at Wolverhampton in 1642. His father was slain in a skirmish near Wolverhampton early in the civil war (Smith, Brewood, p. 38) . The family still exists, and traces a pedigree without failure of heirs male from before the Conquest. Bonaventure was educated in the English College at Douay, and thence proceeded on 23 Oct. ”

“ Giffard, John, Lord Giffard of Bromsfield: after Prince Edward there insert in March 1264 296 ii 12 Giffard, Stanley L.: omit of cancer 300 ii 33 Gifford, George (d. 1620) : after ii. 201) . insert He took no degree at Oxford and seems to have graduated B.A. (1569-70) and M.A. (1573) from Christ's College, Cambridge. It is probable that he is the George Gifford who, aged 30, was ordained by the bishop of London both deacon and priest in Dec. 1578. 302 i 12 Gifford, Gilbert: for Achin read Anchine 308 ii 13 f.e. ”

“ Arouse thee, Gifford! be thy promise claim'd,
Make bad men better, or, at least, ashamed.
One curious peculiarity Gifford had. He made his old housekeeper sit in his study doing her needlework whilst he was engaged on his literary labours. To the end he maintained a warm friendship with Dr. Ireland, Dean of Westminster, son of a butcher of Ashburton, and a schoolfellow in former days, and when he died he bequeathed to him his library.
"The last month of Gifford's life was but a slow dying," says Mr. Smiles. ”

“ Edith Morriston smiled, and to Gifford it was the most fascinating smile he had ever seen. "Only let me know how I can serve you," he said, his pulses tingling.
"I am thinking of my brother," she replied, in a tone so friendly that it neutralized the rather damping effect of the words. "He is worrying over this business more than one who does not know him well would think. I had an idea, Mr. Gifford, that you might help us by, in a way, standing between us, so far as might be possible, and this Mr. Gervase Henshaw. He stays at your hotel, does he not?" ”

“ Among other persons I brought letters to Gifford, the satirist, but never saw him till yesterday. Never was I so mistaken in my anticipations. Instead of a tall and handsome man, as I had supposed him from his pictures, a man of severe and bitter remarks in conversation, such as I had good reason to believe him from his books, I found him a short, deformed, and ugly little man, with a large head sunk between his shoulders, and one of his eyes turned outward, but withal one of the best-natured, most open, and well-bred gentlemen I have met. ”

“ The Anti-Jacobin and the editing of divers English classics put Gifford still higher; and when the Quarterly Review was established in opposition to the Edinburgh, his appointment (1809) to the editorship, which he held almost till his death (he gave it up in 1824 and died in 1826) , completed his literary position. Gifford is little read nowadays, and a name which was not a very popular one even on his own side during his lifetime has, since the triumph of the politics and of some of the literary styles which he opposed, become almost a byword for savage and unfair criticism. ”

“ It was not in human nature that William Gifford should withhold his hand from turning out some neat lines taking off the sanctimonious and pretentious cobbler, and so revenging himself for slights and insults many. It is not in human nature that he should refrain from showing this product to his fellow apprentices. ”

“ Gifford is the most obliging and well-meaning man alive, and that he is perfectly ready to be instructed in those points of which his seclusion renders him ignorant; and all that I wish and mean is, that we should strive to open clearly the view which is so obvious to us—that our first number must be a most brilliant one in every respect ”

“ His disregard for external show was the more remarkable, as a contrary feeling is generally observable in persons who have risen from penury to wealth. But Gifford was a gentleman in feeling and in conduct, and you were never led to suspect he was sprung from an obscure origin except when he reminded you of it by an anecdote relative to it. And this recalls one of the stories he used to tell with irresistible drollery, the merit of which entirely depended on his manner. ”

“ GIFFORD, ADAM, Lord Gifford (1820–1887) , lord of session and founder of the Gifford lectureships, eldest son of James Gifford and his wife, Catherine Ann West, was born at Edinburgh on 29 Feb. 1820. His father, who had risen from a comparatively humble position, became treasurer and master of the Merchant Company, an elder in the Secession church, and a zealous Sunday-school teacher. His mother was vigorous in body and mind, and a very independent thinker. ”

“ The rector shook his head ruefully. "Denner has two trout. Fate was against me. Any fishing about Lockhaven, Gifford? Ward do any?"
Gifford laughed. "He only fishes for men," he said. "He devotes himself to it day and night. Especially of late; his fear of hell-fire for other people's souls has seemed to take great hold on him."
"Gad!" said Dr. Howe. "He's a queer fellow."
"He's a good fellow," Gifford answered warmly. "And as to his belief, why, you believe in hell, don't you, doctor?" ”

“ At Grosvenor's house Gifford proceeded with his ‘Juvenal,’ which, however, did not appear until 1802, when the autobiography from which the preceding facts are taken was given in the preface. Gifford first became known by the two satires, the ‘Baviad’ (1794) and the ‘Mæviad’ (1795) , published together in 1797. Gifford attacks the so-called Della Cruscans, a small clique of English at Florence, including Mrs. Piozzi, Mr. Merry, and other scribblers, who published poems in a paper called ‘The World’ under such signatures as ‘Anna Matilda.’ They were so silly as to be too small game for satire. ”

“ I have ears upon all sides of my head. ’Tis Yan Gratz. You’ve set his value too low. Gratz will not forget the leopard spots upon him. Like the leopard, he will bite, and as stealthily he will crawl.”
“Pardieu, Jacquard, is it so?” Bras-de-Fer lifted his brows. “And what is the grievance now?”
Jacquard scratched his great nose in perplexity before he replied.
“It is the discipline,” he began, slowly—“the discipline which has wearied them; they have little rum to drink: two tins yesterday, one tin to-day, and, lastly—monsieur will pardon me—lastly, monsieur, this matter of the lady prisoner. ”

“ She rose, and sauntered carelessly to the door.
"I dote on motors," she said. "Nothing pleases me better than to go out in my own alone. I am coming to see your steed, Captain. The rooms are so hot here that I have a great mind to run away with it."
Gifford murmured something about the honour and pleasure. There was no vehicle to be seen in the dark street besides the gleaming mass of brass and steel that quietly simmered by the pavement.
"A beauty!" the Countess exclaimed, "And the same action as my own. ”