William Gifford

“ WILLIAM GIFFORD William Gifford, the satirist, was born at Ashburton in April, 1756. His father’s name was Edward, and he says that his great-grandfather “was possessed of considerable property at Halsbury, a parish in the neighbourhood of Ashburton.” There is no such parish, but there is the manor of Halsbury that belonged to the Giffords or Giffards in the neighbourhood of Bideford, in Parkham parish. ”

“ Her goods were seized by a creditor, ‘C.,’ who was also William's godfather. The infant was sent to the almshouse, and ‘bound to a husbandman.’ William Gifford, when his own prospects improved, did his best to help his brother. The boy was sent to sea, but died soon afterwards. Meanwhile the godfather, C., under the pressure of Ashburton sentiment, which held that he had sufficiently paid himself, sent William Gifford to school, where he began to show taste for arithmetic. C. soon tired of the expense, and sent Gifford to work on a farm. ”

“ If they occur to men of a different stamp they are of no avail. If William Gifford had not been a hard-working student, such a circumstance as the accidental perusal of one of his letters by a person for whom it was not intended could not have helped his fortunes in the least. It appears that he had been in the habit of corresponding with a friend in London on literary matters. His letters to this friend were sent under covers, and in order to save postage were left at Lord Grosvenor’s. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ Amongst the first things that Reeves ever said to me was: ‘I tell you what, Cobbett, we have only two ways here; we must either kiss,—o [266] r kick them; and you must make your choice at once.’ I resolved to kick. William Gifford had more asperity in his temper, and was less resigned. He despised Pitt and Canning and the whole crew; but he loved ease, was timid; he was their slave all his life, and all his life had to endure a conflict between his pecuniary interest and his conscience. ”

“ Where few and feeble are the Muse’s strains, And no fine frenzy riots in the veins. So he characterizes his environment in his epistle to William Gifford, which was prefixed to the American edition of the Baviad and Maeviad in 1799. ”

“ Again Gifford's tone gave a check to Kelson's enthusiasm.
It was with a more serious face that he replied, "Muriel Tredworth, the best girl in England. I hope, my dear Hugh, you are not going to say you don't think so."
"Certainly not," Gifford answered promptly. "I never saw or heard of her before to-night."
Kelson laughed uncomfortably. A man in love and in the flush of acceptance wants something more than a lukewarm reception of the news. "I'm glad to hear it," he responded dryly. "From your tone one might almost imagine that you knew something against Muriel." ”

“ She laughed. "So far that I now share with Muriel Tredworth the suspicion of knowing all about the tragedy."
"Hardly that," Gifford replied with a smile. "There can be no cause for that fear. By the way," he added more seriously, "I owe you an account of my failure to gain any information for you with regard to Mr. Gervase Henshaw's plans."
"He is not communicative?" Miss Morriston suggested casually.
Gifford shook his head. "No, I am never able to get hold of him. In fact, it seems as though he rather makes a point of avoiding us. And if we do meet, he is vagueness and reticence personified." ”

“ Gifford ejaculated fervently.
"You don't congratulate me," his friend returned with a touch of suspicion.
Gifford forced a laugh. "My dear Harry, you have taken my breath away. You deserve the best wife in the kingdom, and I sincerely hope you have got her," he said, not very convincingly.
His half-heartedness, not too successfully masked, evidently struck Kelson. "One would hardly suppose you thought so," he said in a hurt tone. "I wish," he added warmly, "if there is anything at the back of your words you would speak out. I should hope we are old friends enough for that." ”

“ 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. ”

“ As to there being an adequate reason for alarm Gifford was not inclined to question, since he quite realized that this man Henshaw might easily constitute himself a grave annoyance to the Morristons. A clever girl like Edith Morriston, more sensitive than to a casual observer would appear, had naturally recognized this danger and was anxious to have the man, with his, perhaps, none too scrupulous methods, held in check; and to this service Gifford was only too happy to devote himself, glad beyond measure that the opportunity had been given him by the girl who had filled his thoughts. ”

“ Having attained an university education by private benevolence, and arrived at noble and powerful patronage by a circumstance purely accidental Mr. Gifford possessed advantages which few in humble life dare hope, and fewer aspire to achieve. He improved his learned leisure and patrician aid, till, in 1802, he published his translation of Juvenal, with a dedication to earl Grosvenor, and the preceding memoir. ”

“ In 1809 he published his ‘Outlines of Mineralogy’ (2 vols. 8vo, Oxford) , which were reviewed by Dr. Thomas Thomson of Edinburgh in the ‘Quarterly Review’ (vol. ii.) in an article which Gifford, the editor, altered in some parts as being ‘very splenetic and very severe, and much too wantonly so.’ Gifford added: ‘Kidd is a modest and unassuming man, and is not to be attacked with sticks and stones like a savage’ (Smiles, Memoir of John Murray, i. 162) . ”

“ They were nearing the house, and Gifford was debating whether he dared suggest another turn along the shrubbery path, when Richard Morriston appeared at the hall door, beckoned to them, and went in again.
"I wonder what Dick wants. Has anything more come to light?" Miss Morriston observed with a rather bored laugh as she slightly quickened her pace.
As they went in she called, "Dick!" and he answered her from the library. There they found him with Kelson and Muriel Tredworth. A glance at their faces told Gifford that they were all in a state of scarcely suppressed excitement. ”

“ Morriston said laughingly. "When it lies in the shadow of the house it is a regular trap."
"Moonlight has its dangers as well as its beauties," Painswick murmured sententiously.
"The friendly cloak of night is apt to trip one up," Gifford added.
As he spoke the words there came a startling little cry from Miss Tredworth accompanied by the crash and clatter of falling crockery. Gifford's remark had been made with his eyes fixed on his friend's fiancée, to whom at that moment Miss Morriston was handing the refilled cup of tea. A hand of each girl was upon the saucer as the words were uttered ”

“ His father, who was a man of spendthrift and profligate habits, died of the effects of his evil conduct before he had attained the age of forty. In twelve months afterward Gifford’s mother died, leaving William, and a little brother two years old, orphans, and, it would seem, penniless. As no home could be found for the infant, he was sent to the workhouse. William, then thirteen years of age, fell into the hands of a man named Carlisle, who had stood as his godfather, a worthless fellow, who had appropriated the few things left by the mother, on pretence of claiming them for debt. ”

“ Miss Morriston standing with head bent down and scoring the grass with her walking-stick as though in doubt or consideration. Would they turn and put the man's identity beyond uncertainty?
Gifford had not long to wait. Miss Morriston seemed to draw off and began to walk back down the ride; her companion turned and promptly put himself by her side. There was no doubt now as to who he was. Gervase Henshaw. ”

“ Beaumont and Fletcher. See note to "The
Two Races of Men" for an account of Lamb's copy, now in the British
Museum.
Page 197, line 5 from foot. No sympathy with them. After these words, in the London Magazine, came, "nor with Mr. Gifford's Ben Jonson." This edition by Lamb's old enemy, William Gifford, editor of the Quarterly, was published in 1816. Lamb's copy of Ben Jonson was dated 1692, folio. It is now in America, I believe. ”

“ Absurd to wait till every decent girl's card is full."
"I don't like it, Hugh."
"Nor do I. But it is practically my fault in not looking sharper after my luggage, and better one should suffer than two."
So it was arranged that Captain Kelson should go on alone and his guest should follow as soon as his clothes turned up and he could change into them.
That settled, they sat down to dinner.
"Tell me about the Morristons, Harry," Gifford said. "He is a very good fellow, isn't he?"
"Dick Morriston? One of the best. Straight goer to hounds and straight in every other capacity, I should say. ”

“ A man and a woman; their backs were towards him, but his blood gave a leap at the sight as their identity flashed upon him. It was, in its unexpectedness, an almost appalling sight to him, as he realised that the two were none other than Henshaw and Edith Morriston.
CHAPTER XIV GIFFORD'S PERPLEXITY Next moment Gifford had instinctively sprung back into the covert of the trees, almost dazed by what he had seen. Henshaw and Edith Morriston! Could it be possible? His eyes must have deceived him. About the girl there could be no doubt. Her tall, graceful figure was unmistakable. But the man. ”

“ Gifford relates the preceding anecdote, in a note on his Juvenal, from Macrobius. He makes the poet draw the farthings from his “pocket:” but the pocket was unknown to the Greeks and Romans. Mr. Fosbroke says the men used the girdle, and the women their bosom; and that Strutt thinks the scrip, and purse, or bag, were succedanea. The Anglo-Saxon and Norman women wore pocketting sleeves ”

“ I confess I am in the mood of it, and that there is a suggestion of more richness about the name of Rome than about that of Rye, which, until Schott's veto, was the plan. How the Gifford lectures will fare, remains to be seen. I have felt strong movings towards home this fall, but reflection says: "Stay another winter," and I confess that now that October is approaching, it feels like the home-stretch and as if the time were getting short and the limbs of "next summer" in America burning through the veil which seems to hide them in the shape of the second European winter months. ”

“ Kelson observed with a laugh. "He surely can't be living all this time in his evening clothes. Not but what a man like that would not let a trifle stand in his way if he had some scampish sport in view. No doubt he is up to a dodge or two by way of obviating these little difficulties."
In the afternoon the two friends went up to Wynford Place to call after the dance. Kelson had naturally been much more inclined to drive over to the Tredworths, about seven miles away, in order to settle his betrothal, but Gifford suggested that the duty call should be paid first, and so it was arranged. ”

“ Under a bright sun, mixed up with glittering foliage, overtopped by graceful palms, and canopied by the most dazzling of skies, even roofs and chimneys combine with the beauty around them, and become part of it in their turn. ”

“ I do not find in the hotel waiters, chambermaids and bath-attendants with whom my lot is chiefly cast, that unique mixture of erudition, originality, profundity and vastness, and human wit and leisureliness, by accustoming me to which during all these years you have spoilt me for inferior kinds of intercourse. You are still the centre of my gaze, the pole of my mental magnet. When I write, 'tis with one eye on the page, and one on you. When I compose my Gifford lectures mentally, 'tis with the design exclusively of overthrowing your system, and ruining your peace. ”

“ This book would never have been written had I not been honored with an appointment as Gifford Lecturer on Natural Religion at the University of Edinburgh. In casting about me for subjects of the two courses of ten lectures each for which I thus became responsible, it seemed to me that the first course might well be a descriptive one on "Man's Religious Appetites," and the second a metaphysical one on "Their Satisfaction through Philosophy." ”

“ Between this double human range, that like an inner and more variegated avenue lined the overarching trees from the water's edge up to the dwelling-house, we passed along, while the merry tumult of the assembled crowd, and the repeated discharge of the small cannon planted at the landing-place and in the garden mingled, together to announce and greet our arrival. ”