368 Mr. Gi ford. [FEB. 



capabilities he possessed will probably, on the one side be elevated into 

 disproportioned dignity, and on the other, degraded into unjustifiable scorn. 



Having neither partialities to indulge, nor offences to retaliate, we are 

 the more qualified to give an honest and plain sketch of Mr. Gilford's 

 career. 



He was born at Ashburton, in Devonshire. There was some recollection 

 of his family, as having once possessed property in the county. But tho 

 property had been squandered generations before. The family had 

 acquired no name beyond that of having struggled and died, and if all 

 ancestry is scarcely better than a burlesque, of such an ancestry Gifford 

 probably felt that the less was said the better. Gilford's first employment 

 was that of a cabin-boy on board a Devonshire coaster. How his frame, 

 decrepit and feeble at all times could have endured the severe privations 

 and labours of the sea, is not easily conceivable. But. after some expe- 

 rience of this misery, he is found on shore, apprenticed by his godfather 

 to a shoemaker, with whom he continued long enough to be thought at 

 least master of his trade, so far as the wit of man has advanced it in 

 Devonshire ; for he continued to wield the awl until he was twenty years 

 old. 



During this more than Egyptian slavery to a mind of any elevation, 

 accident, propitious to him through life, and now in its most propitious shape, 

 threw literature in his way. A young woman who took compassion on 

 the unhappy shoemaker, lent him a book. Whether prompted by a 

 passion for the muse, or by the more natural influence of regard for the 

 person who had alone exhibited any consideration for him, he -became a 

 writer of verses. The verses of a village poet were then rare things. 

 Gifford's lines met the eye of a good-natured man in the neighbourhood, of 

 the name of Cooksley. There is some benevolence still remaining in the 

 world, and much may be done by a little goodwill united with activity. 

 Gifford was in the natural road to perishing of asthma, disgust, and disap- 

 pointed longings, when the obscure philanthropist, this Devonshire " Man 

 of Ross," took him by the hand, made interest enough in the vicinity to 

 raise a small subscription, bought out his indentures, and sent him to 

 school. His protege was acute, naturally diligent, and probably conscious 

 of the necessity of peculiar exertion. In the short space of two years and 

 a half he was entered of Exeter College, Oxford. 



The qualifications for entry at that time were not very high, and, once 

 inside the wall every student might labour or lounge, according to his 

 own will and pleasure.. The diligent might indulge in boundless study, 

 and the idle might lie on their oar, and wait till the tide of time brought 

 liberty and their degrees. But Gifford, through life, loved reading for its 

 own sake, and caring little for society, deprived of the means of excess, 

 temperate by nature, and incited to the pursuit of literary distinction by 

 the hopes and wishes of his patrons, must have been a vigorous student. 

 Accident, which seems never to have failed him, here stood his friend in 

 a remarkable degree. His natural fate would have been a fellowship, 

 which has been called a thirty years walk to a church with a church- 

 yard close beside it. The optics of human nature are said to have 

 been made for " near-sighted glasses," and perhaps no man ever worked 

 his way through an University, without at some time or other 

 thinking that a fellowship was one of the most magnificent things in the 

 world. The awe of the menials, the uncapping of the students, the 

 absolute supremacy of the Common room ; and the stately looks and 



