established the Anti-Jacobin Review on the cessation of a weekly newspaper entitled the Anti-Jacobin. On the death of Pitt he published a narrative of his political life, which, notwithstanding its tediousness, reached a second edition. Another voluminous work of his was the "History of France to the death of Louis XVI." Mr. Gifford's political support was rewarded by ministers with a pension and the post of police magistrate. He died at Bromley in Kent in 1818. A list of his various publications to the number of fifteen may be seen in the Ann. Biog. and Obit. for 1819, p. 336.—R. H.
GIFFORD, Rev. Richard, was born in 1725, and educated at Balliol college, Oxford, where in 1748, having then recently taken the degree of B.A., he distinguished himself by a masterly pamphlet on Mr. Kennicot's Dissertation on the Tree of Life in Paradise. His small poem, styled "Contemplation," was printed in 1753, and attracted the notice of Dr. Johnson. He entered into holy orders and obtained various preferments, settling finally on the livings of Duffield in Derbyshire and North Okendon in Essex. He died at Duffield in 1807. He also wrote in 1782 "Outlines of an Answer to Dr. Priestley's Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit."—R. H.
GIFFORD, Robert, Baron Gifford of St. Leonards, an eminent lawyer, was born at Exeter on the 24th of February, 1779. His father, an extensive dealer in hops, grocery, and drapery in that city, found himself precluded by the claims of a large family from gratifying that wish to go to the bar which the future chief-justice evinced even in childhood. He was accordingly articled to an Exeter attorney, and so distinguished himself by his legal acumen that his family at last made arrangements for the gratification of his early ambition. Proceeding to London and entering as a student at the middle temple in 1800, he had acquired an extensive practice as a special pleader before he was called to the bar in the February of 1808. He joined the western circuit, and having been fortunately retained in an important case, which enabled him to display a rare knowledge of the law of real property, he attracted the notice of Lord Ellenborough, then chief-justice of the court of king's bench, an event which aided his subsequent success. Unknown personally to the ministry of the day, he was appointed, solely for his legal merits, solicitor-general in 1817, and soon afterwards was sent to the house of commons as member for Eye in Suffolk. Leaving the court of king's bench to practise in chancery, he became principal leader in Scotch appeal cases to the house of lords, and in 1819 was appointed attorney-general. In this capacity he prosecuted to conviction the conspirators in the Cato Street plot of 1820, and in the same year he had to support, in opposition to the eloquence of Brougham, the bill of pains and penalties preferred against Queen Caroline. In 1824 he was appointed chief-justice of the common pleas and deputy-speaker of the house of lords, in order to assist the lord chancellor in hearing Scotch appeal cases, of which there was a great accumulation. His success in the discharge of the latter important function was so great, that when he visited Scotland in 1825, he was received with great respect by the judges of the court of session, and had the degree of LL.D. conferred on him by the university of Edinburgh. Appointed subsequently master of the rolls, in this capacity he had to hear numerous appeals brought under the notice of the privy council; and his varied and incessant labours having undermined his constitution, he died, with the woolsack in view, on the 4th September, 1826, at Dover, whither he had repaired to recruit his health. There is a detailed notice of him by a gentleman of the legal profession, who had been acquainted with Lord Gifford from his youth, in the Annual Biography and Obituary for 1827.—F. E.
GIFFORD, William, an English critic and man of letters, was born in the town of Ashburton, Devonshire, in April, 1757. His father, Edward, was one of those "rolling stones" that "gather no moss," recklessly wasting, in a life of strange adventure, the diminished patrimony that had come to him from a once respectable family. In his earlier days he tried the sea, he wandered amongst outcasts, and then he turned to trade, marrying the daughter of a carpenter in Ashburton, and setting up as a plumber and glazier in South Molton. But the bonds of matrimony appear to have been as fragile as glass, and he abandoned both wife and trade, betaking himself once more to the sea. Under those sad auspices William shortly after first saw the light. Eight years afterwards the wanderer returned to his home and his wife, if a wiser, certainly not a richer man. The ministrations of a humble schoolmistress afforded William, when eight years old, the rudiments of education, to which his mother added somewhat, and so he contrived to pick up bits of knowledge here and there, as boys who have the hunger of learning on them are sure to do, till the death of his father, ere the boy had reached his thirteenth year, and that of his mother, not long after, left him an orphan, friendless and destitute, with a little brother only two years of age. Even the remnant of property which his mother left was grasped, under the plea of being a creditor, by the one of all others who should have befriended the poor boys—their own godfather. Public opinion was, however, too strong for the avarice of the man; and when he had appropriated their worldly goods, he was ashamed to abandon both of them utterly, so he took William home, and sent the child to the alms-house. He was shamed, too, into sending William to school, where, for three months, the lad applied himself with an intensity of love to learning, especially to arithmetic; but, at the expiration of this brief period, avarice was again in the ascendant, and his godfather "sickened at the expense," and withdrew him. The plough was now put into his hand. He drove it for a day, and then sturdily refused to do so again. He had neither physical strength nor inclination to become a farm drudge. He was now put aboard a coasting vessel at Brixham that plied to Dartmouth and Plymouth, where he continued for about a year, discharging every menial office, and destitute of a book to read. At fourteen came his next change—shoemaking. This he hated with a perfect hatred. He was the worst of cobblers, and as such turned over to the household drudgery of his master's family. But the love of learning was growing strong upon him. His deeply interesting autobiography tells how he struggled to overcome all difficulties in the pursuit of this passion—adding one illustration more to the thousand of those whose indomitable will never swerves, and never succumbs. Penniless, friendless, without pen, ink, and paper; possessed of one invaluable book, a treatise on algebra, too little elementary for him to understand—he stumbled on a carefully-concealed treatise belonging to his master's son, of which he stealthily availed himself by sitting up whole nights till he mastered it completely, and then unlocked the treasures of his own book; and then he says, "I beat out pieces of leather as smooth as possible, and wrote my problems on them with a blunted awl. For the rest my memory was tenacious, and I could multiply and divide by it to a great extent." And so he drudged and toiled at the ungrateful as well as the grateful labour, and this last, too, was lighted up with a gleam of poetic light. He tried his hand at verse, and he pleased those to whom he showed his verses. In his twentieth year these reached the eye of a surgeon named William Cookesley, a name which the gratitude of Gifford has made immortal. He sent for Gifford, who laid the whole history of his life, its struggles, and its aspirations, before the worthy man. "His first care," says Gifford, "was to console; his second, which he cherished to the last moment of his existence, was to relieve and support me." Cookesley saw his deficiencies, but he saw, too, his powers. He dispersed amongst his friends the poems of the young shoemaker; raised a subscription to purchase up his indentures, and to defray his schooling; and had the satisfaction of seeing his protegé making the best use of his opportunities, and in little more than a year, of enabling him to enter Exeter college, Cambridge. And now the great struggle is over, and Gifford has placed his foot upon sure ground. His talents attract attention. A readership is conferred on him, he takes pupils, and applies himself industriously to classics, translating Greek and Latin authors, and especially devoting his attention to the translation of Juvenal. Portions of this last were shown to Lord Grosvenor, who became his friend and patron, supplying the place of that earliest and best one who now was in his grave. With this nobleman he resided for a time, after leaving Oxford without taking a degree, and accompanied his patron's son, Lord Belgraye, upon a continental tour, previously to settling down in London to the profession of letters. We now come to the author-life of William Gifford. In 1794 appeared his first work of note. The Delia Cruscan school of poetry was at its height. To their affectations and inanities the pen of Gifford was applied with keen and unsparing power. The vehicle for his satirical criticism was a paraphrase of the first satire of Persius, under the title of the "Baviad."' It was eminently successful, demolishing the poetasters, and establishing the reputa-
