Gifford had no books save a Bible, a Thomas à Kempis, and a black-letter romance, Parismus and Parismenus, that had belonged to his mother, together with some chapbooks, The Golden Bull, and such like trifles. However, he found a stray treatise on algebra in a lodging-house, and commandeered it. But this last book was not at this time of any advantage to him, as to understand it a preliminary knowledge of simple equations was necessary—and what “equations” meant he knew no more than did the man in the moon, who had at his command no library whatsoever.
However, his master’s son had a Flemming’s Introduction to Knowledge, which, as a spiteful boy, he refused to let Gifford use, and hid it away. William, however, by accident discovered where the book was concealed and carried it off, sat up for several nights, and poring over it with avidity mastered the contents, and was then able to pursue his studies in algebra.
He says: “I hated my new profession with a perfect hatred; I made no progress in it, and was consequently little regarded in the family, of which I sank by degrees into the common drudge.”
Whilst at Ashburton his dreary life had been cheered by making friends with some of his schoolfellows. One of these was young Hoppner, afterwards a famous portrait painter, a rival of Sir Thomas Lawrence, and in after years he looked back to this friendship with pleasure, and wrote to him, on the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds—
One Sun is set, one Glorious Sun, whose rays
Long gladdened Britain with no common blaze;
O may’st thou soon (for clouds begin to rise)
Assert thy station in the Eastern skies,
Glow with his fires, and give the world to see
Another Reynolds rise, my friend, in thee!