William Gifford was born in 1755, at Ashburton, in Devonshire, England, and for several years led the miserable kind of life which is common among the children of a drunken and reckless father. His father died when only forty years of age, leaving his wife with two children, the youngest little more than eight months old, and no available means for their support. In about a year afterward his wife followed, and thus was William, at the age of thirteen, and his infant brother, thrown upon the world in an utterly destitute condition.
The parish workhouse now received the younger of the orphans, and William was taken home to the house of a person named Carlile, his godfather, who, whatever might have been his kindness in this respect, had at least taken care of his own interests, by seizing on every article left by the widow Gifford, on pretence of repaying himself for money which he had advanced to her, in her greatest necessities. The only benefit derived by William from this removal was a little education; as Carlile sent him to school, where he acquired the elements of instruction. His chief proficiency, as he tells us, was in arithmetic; but he was not suffered to make much progress in his studies, for, grudging the expense, his patron took him from school, with the object of making him a ploughboy. To the plough he would accordingly have gone, but for a weakness in his chest, the result of an accident some years before. It was now proposed to send him to a storehouse in Newfoundland; but the person who was to be benefited by his services declared him to be too small, and this plan was also dropped. “My godfather,” says William, “had now humbler views for me, and I had little heart to resist anything. He proposed to send me on board one of the Torbay fishing-boats. I ventured, however, to remonstrate against this, and the matter was compromised by my consenting to go on board a coaster. A coaster was speedily found for me at Brixham, and thither I went, when little more than thirteen.”
In this vessel he remained for nearly a year. “It will be easily conceived,” he remarks, “that my life was a life of hardship, I was not only a ‘ship-boy on the high and giddy mast,’ but also in the cabin, where every menial office fell to my lot; yet if I was restless and discontented, I can safely say it was not so much on account of this, as of my being precluded from all possibility of reading; as my master did not possess, nor do I recollect seeing, during the whole time of my abode with him, a single book of any description except the ‘Coasting Pilot.’”
While in this humble situation, however, and seeming to himself almost an outcast from the world, he was not forgotten. He had broken off all connexion with Ashburton, where his godfather lived; but “the women of Brixham,” says he, “who travelled to Ashburton twice a week with fish, and who had known my parents, did not see me without kind concern running about the beach, in ragged jacket and trousers.” They often mentioned him to their acquaintances at Ashburton; and the tale excited so much commiseration in the place, that his godfather at last found himself obliged to send for him home. At this time he wanted some months of fourteen. He proceeds with his own story as follows:—
“After the holydays, I returned to my darling pursuit—arithmetic. My progress was now so rapid, that in a few months I was at the head of the school, and qualified to assist my master (Mr. E. Furlong) on any extraordinary emergency. As he usually gave me a trifle on these occasions, it raised a thought in me, that, by engaging with him as a regular assistant, and undertaking the instruction of a few evening scholars, I might, with a little additional aid, be enabled to support myself. God knows my ideas of support at this time were of no very extravagant nature. I had, besides, another object in view. Mr. Hugh Smerdon (my first master) was now grown old and infirm; it seemed unlikely that he should hold out above three or four years; and I fondly flattered myself that, notwithstanding my youth, I might possibly be appointed to succeed him.
“I was in my fifteenth year when I built these castles. A storm, however, was collecting, which unexpectedly burst upon me, and swept them all away.
“On mentioning my little plan to Carlile, he treated it with the utmost contempt; and told me, in his turn, that as I had learned enough, and more than enough, at school, he must be considered as having fairly discharged his duty (so indeed he had); he added that he had been negotiating with his cousin, a shoemaker of some respectability who had liberally agreed to take me, without a fee, as an apprentice. I was so shocked at this intelligence, that I did not remonstrate, but went in sullenness and silence to my new master, to whom I was soon after bound, till I should attain the age of twenty-one.
“At this time,” he continues, “I possessed but one book in the world: it was a treatise on algebra, given to me by a young woman, who had found it in a lodging-house. I considered it as a treasure; but it was a treasure locked up; for it supposed the reader to be well acquainted with simple equations, and I knew nothing of the matter. My master’s son had purchased Fenning’s Introduction: this was precisely what I wanted; but he carefully concealed it from me, and I was indebted to chance alone for stumbling upon his hiding-place. I sat up for the greatest part of several nights successively, and, before he suspected that his treatise was discovered, had completely mastered it. I could now enter upon my own, and that carried me pretty far into the science. This was not done without difficulty. I had not a farthing on earth, nor a friend to give me one; pen, ink, and paper, therefore, were for the most part as completely out of my reach as a crown and sceptre. There was indeed a resource; but the utmost caution and secresy were necessary in applying to it. I beat out pieces of leather as smooth as possible, and wrote my problems on them with a blunted awl; for the rest, my memory was tenacious, and I could multiply and divide by it to a great extent.”
Persevering under these untoward difficulties, he at length obtained some alleviation of his poverty. Having attempted to write some verses, his productions were received with applause, and sometimes, he adds, “with favors more substantial: little collections were now and then made, and I have received sixpence in an evening. To one who had long lived in the absolute want of money, such a resource seemed a Peruvian mine. I furnished myself by degrees with paper, &c., and what was of more importance, with books of geometry, and of the higher branches of algebra, which I cautiously concealed. Poetry, even at this time, was no amusement of mine—it was subservient to other purposes; and I only had recourse to it when I wanted money for my mathematical pursuits.”
Gifford’s master having capriciously put a stop to these literary recreations, and taken away all his books and papers, he was greatly mortified, if not reduced to a state of despair. “I look back,” he says, “on that part of my life which immediately followed this event, with little satisfaction: it was a period of gloom and savage unsociability. By degrees I sunk into a kind of corporeal torpor; or, if roused into activity by the spirit of youth, wasted the exertion in splenetic and vexatious tricks, which alienated the few acquaintances which compassion had yet left me.”