GIFFORD, Wrraiem (1756-1826). An Eng lish author. He was born at Ashburton, Devon shire, in April, 1756. Left an orphan at twelve, he was first a cabin-boy and then an apprentice to a shoemaker. Aided by a local surgeon who had seen some of the boy's verses, he was sent to Exeter College, Oxford, where he was gradu ated B.A. in 1782. He.now traveled on the Con tinent for 'many years' as tutor to the son of Lord Grosvenor. His first publication was the Baviad (1794), a satire on a group of scribblers known as 'Della Cruseans' (q.v.). This was fol lowed by the Mceviad (1795), a similar satire on some of the contemporary dramatists; and by a savage attack on Dr. John Wolcot, entitled An Epistle to Peter Pindar (1800). Wolcot retali ated with the feeble Cut at a Cobbler. In 1802 appeared a translation of Juvenal, which Gifford had begun at the university, and to which he now prefixed an autobiography. Gifford, who had gained the favor of Canning and his political friends, edited the in 1797-98; and in 1809 he was appointed the first editor of the Quarterly Review. He was soon recognized as
one of the severest reviewers of the time. Hav ing no sympathy with the new schools of poets and critics, he attacked Hazlitt, Hunt, Lamb, Wordsworth, Shelley, and especially Keats, with great bitterness. (Consult review of Keats's "Endymion," in the Quarterly, April, 1818.) He resigned from the Quarterly in 1824, having amassed a fortune of £25,000. He died December 31, 1826, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Gifford is perhaps best known to scholars by his editions of Massinger, Ben Jonson, and Ford, and notes to Shirley used by Dyce in his edition of the dramatist. This work, however, was not done very carefully. The Baviad and the Mceriad are in British, Poets, edited by Frost (Philadelphia, 1838).