GIFFORD, William, English critic: b. Ash burton, Devonshire, April 1756; d. London, 31 Dec. 1826. Left an orphan at 11 years of age, he became a cabin boy and was thereafter ap prenticed to a shoemaker. Through the interest of a local surgeon he was sent to Oxford, after ward traveled on the Continent with Lord Bel grave for some years, and on his return to England devoted his time to literary pursuits. In 1794 he published 'The Baviad,' a poetical satire, in which the poetasters of the Della Cruscan school are the chief objects of his ridicule; and in 1795 appeared 'The Maviad,' a severe animadversion on the degraded state of the drama. These works, though virulent and coarse, display much critical ability. In 1797 he became editor of the Anti-Jacobin newspaper— an office which involved him in a quarrel with Dr. Wolcot, against whom he published a pamphlet in verse, entitled 'An Epistle to Peter Pindar.' His translation of the 'Satires of
Juvenal> was published in 1802, and is executed in a manner highly creditable to his abilities. He edited the plays of Massinger, with notes, and a life of that dramatist (1805) ; and after ward in a similar manner the works of Ben Jonson, Ford and Shirley. He also translated the 'Satires of Persius.> In 1809 he entered on the editorship of the Quarterly Review, of which he continued to be conductor till 1824, when he resigned. He showed himself a tactful editor and gathered round him a group of dis tinguished contributors; but he was an un scrupulous and violent partisan of the ultra Tory type, and assailed bitterly the works of such men as Hazlitt, Hunt, Lamb and Shelley. His attack of Keats' Endymion,' which ap peared in September 1818, with its sad sequel, is well known. He was interred in West minster Abbey.