GIFFORD, WILLIAM (1756-1826), English publicist and man of letters, was born at Ashburton, Devon, in April 1756, the son of a glazier. Before he was 13 William had lost both parents, and after being sent to sea and then apprenticed to a shoemaker, he was able to return to school through the kindness of an Ashburton surgeon, William Cooksley. In 1779 he pro ceeded to Oxford, where he was appointed a Bible clerk in Exeter college. On graduating, he found a patron in the first Earl Gros venor, who sent him on two prolonged Continental tours in the capacity of tutor to his son, Lord Belgrave. Settling in London, Gifford published in 1794 his clever satirical piece, after Persius, entitled the Baviad, aimed at a coterie of writers at Florence, then popularly known as the Della Cruscans, of which Mrs. Piozzi was the leader. A second satire of a similar description, the Maeviad, directed against the corruptions of the drama, appeared in 1795. About this time Gifford became acquainted with Canning, with whose help he originated the weekly newspaper of Conserva tive politics entitled the Anti-Jacobin, which began to appear in In 1809, when the Quarterly Review was projected, he was made editor. The success which attended the Quarterly from the outset was due in no small degree to Gifford, but Southey, one of his regular contributors, said that Gifford looked on authors as Izaak Walton did on worms. 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 connection with the Review continued until within about two years of his death in London on Dec. 31, 1826. Gifford also published an English version of Juvenal (1802), an annotated edition of Massinger's Plays (1804), a metrical translation of Persius (1821) and an edition of the dramas of Ben Jonson (1816). His edition of Ford and a short auto biography appeared posthumously in 1827.