University of Virginia Library

This gentleman was ravished from his opposition-friends on account of supposed extraordinary talents. A completer take-in of the knowing-ones was never more laughably experienced amonst the black-legs of the turf. His ‘Iter ad Meccam,’ for the university prize, exhibited such proofs of ideas and scholarship as put the poor dean of Christ-Church to the blush. The first effort was condemned to the flames, though it obtained the prize: the second was a cobbled piece of work between Mr. Canning and somebody of Christ-Church, which with difficulty passed muster.

This is a most extraordinary fellow, speculatively virtuous, and practically wicked—for ever bellowing in the cause of religion and morals, yet in the daily practice of every thing that should fix him at the cart's-tail.—To justify the above assertions, accept, reader, a small sketch of his life, and blush for the depravity of human nature! Taken from a cobbler's stall at Ashburton, a little town in Devonshire, by Mr. Cookesly, a surgeon of that place, who mistook the itch of rhime for the inspiration of the muses, he was, by a subscription of the gentlemen of the town and neighbourhood, placed at a grammar school, and afterwards sent to Exeter College.—At this college, after his daily occupations of tolling the bell, waiting at dinner, and lighting the candles, he amused himself with writing scandalous lampoons on the heads of the college, as well as other respectable characters of the university.—Noticed, however, by a clergyman, he was introduced to Earl G. who soon found an honourable employment for him, luckily for his lordship's pleasures, and fortunately congenial to the disposition of Gifford.—In a little time he tripped up the heels of his Oxford friend, ousted him from the house of G--- by lying insinuations, and publicly triumphed in his success.—His next glorious action was to send a cast-off strumpet of his l---ds*hp to the widow of his old friend Cookesly, who, for a livelihood, kept a creditable boarding-school.—She was recommended by Gifford as a modest young lady, for education, which modest young lady, in a few months, betrayed her old Cyprian propensities, and very expeditiously blasted the school: this was the subject of another triumph. To continue his progress in infamy with an equal splendour, he seduced a beautiful and innocent girl, called Mary Weeks, a native of Ashburton. Under the pretence of marrying her, a fellow with a surplice was prepared to execute this nefarious matter; the sham ceremony was performed, the poor girl was ruined; and after satiety had taken place with her infamous seducer, she was sent back to Ashburton, where she pined and died of a broken heart!!! To support the credit of his past achievements, he published a most dirty and scandalous poem, called ‘The Ashburtonaid,’ abusing all his old and respectable benefactors. Previously to the above act, he had obtained an ample subscription for a Translation of the Satires of Juvenal, which (happily for the public, and paper, and print) he never performed.—To accommodate his Mæcenas, he keeps a creature as a decoy-duck, and has actually sent her to necessitous young women of beauty and innocence, under the pretext of learning to read and write.—Such are parts of his life—Hunc tu Romane, caveto, hic niger est.—It must not, however, be forgotten, that, for his atrocious calumnies, he was lately cudgelled in one Wright's shop, a poor ignorant and painstaking bookseller in Piccadilly; and, in spite of the most solemn and tender protestations of his own head and shoulders, he with an unprecedented effrontery denied the fact; and, notwithstanding a message, informing him that he was cudgelled, most soundly cudgelled, and that he should be cudgelled again in order to oblige him, by producing a complete conviction, he had not the manners to answer the civility.

He continues in his favourite occupation of administering as jackall to the constantly watering chops of the toothless old lion. To use another figure, he is still his lordship's gamekeeper, and guards the plump little partridges (which are exceedingly numerous on all his lordship's manors) with so much laudable assiduity from poachers, that he has been amply and gratefully remunerated with an honourable annuity from government!!!

As for Mr. Gifford's rhimes, they will appears extraordinary to such readers (and they are not a few) as prefer bombast to sublimity. Bombast is the idol of the vulgar—To such, the Attic simplicity appears arrant insipidity—the vulgar eye is sooner fascinated by the stiff, staring cabbage-rose brocade of the harlot, than the modest and snowy robe of innocence. The ear of the true critic distinguishes with facility the difference between the mellifluous tones of the lyre of Apollo and the hard, ponderous sounds of the hammered lap-stone. To indulge a Greek quotation from Proclus on Plato, without offence to his pupil, the learned Lord Belgrave, Mr. William Gifford is—Ιδιωτες εν φιλοσοφοις, φιλοσοφος δε εν Ιδιωταις—which I translate thus: ‘He is a poet with poetasters, and a poetaster with poets.’ So much inequality pervades his verse, that the faculty would pronounce his muse afflicted with the rickets. Still to do him every justice, his various verses are very well for a cobbler; they must undoubtedly smell of the stall.

So singeth Horace, who, one would think, had peeped into futurity, aad penned the happy line for poor Crispin.

So far from originalty of thought and a luxuriance of imagery in his lines, there reigns a pitiable famine: awkward and obscure inversions, with a verbose pomposity, form the leading features of almost every couplet. Indeed, it were cruel to expect more. Sprung from a dunghill, and old before he was charitably taken from his stall, at the same time totally destitute of the poetical character, what could a few scraps of Latin and Greek do for an object whose sole powers lay within the circumscribed space of a rhime? A riddle in the Lady's Diary—an acrostic in a newspaper—an abusive stanza in the Anti-Jacobin Review, or a criticism in the British Critic (equal, perhaps, to those of poor paralytic Parson Nares, a most feeble pillar of that falling fabric, and lately sent for a maintenance to that idle and expensive toyshop of the nation, called the British Museum)— form at present his amusement. At the house of Gr---v---r he experiences a prodigality of praise. But his lordship and his ladies are better qualified for writing the history of Paphos than Parnassus.

On the appearance of this gentleman's last lying publication, which was in some measure answered by the argumentum baculinum, I entertained thoughts of a formal execution of the felon, in a solemn poetical epistle; but, on reflection, thinking him beneath the dignity of such an exhibition, I determined to hang him in a note.

Before I conclude, it may not be unacceptable to my readers to be informed that his I---dsh*p sometimes kills his own mutton—hunts without his jackall—and succeeds. Witness the following little genuine epistle:

‘DEAR G---,

‘I am in luck to-day—sprung a fine covey among a parcel of brambles. Take care of the plump little bird that bears this letter—clean her and comb her well, cut her nails close, and put her to bed.