At the same time, he was by no means inclined to hide his light under a bushel, and his verses contain many deliberately humorous references to his talents. “Had I not stepped forward as the Champion of my own Merit (which is deemed so necessary now-a-days for the obtention of public notice, not only by Authors, but by tête-makers, perfumers, elastic truss and Parliament-speech makers, &c., who, in the daily newspapers, are the heralds of their own splendid abilities),” he wrote in “Subjects for Painters,” “I might possibly be passed by without observation; and thus a great part of a poetical Immortality be sacrificed to a pitiful mauvaise honte.”
Of course he made many enemies, as every satirist must, but he bore attacks unflinchingly, as, indeed, every satirist should.
“Great are my Enemies in Trade, God knows:
There’s not a Poet but would stop my note;
With such a world of Spite their venom flows,
With such good-will the knaves would cut my throat.”
As a rule he treated his revilers with good-humoured banter, but once a critic raised his ire by an unmerciful attack on his “Nil Admirari, or, A Smile at a Bishop,” in The Anti-Jacobin, in which he was styled, “this disgraceful subject, the profligate reviler of his sovereign and impudent blasphemer of his God.” Gifford at once issued as a counterblast, “An Epistle to Peter Pindar,” the savagery of which made the subject so sore that he endeavoured to thrash the author, who, however, had the best of the struggle.
“False fugitive! back to thy vomit flee—
Troll the lascivious song, the fulsome glee;
Truck praise for lust, hunt infant genius down,