JOHN MURRAY.
Mr. Murray lost no time in informing his friends of the new arrangement.
Gifford lived for about two years more, and continued to entertain many kind thoughts of his friends and fellow-contributors: his intercourse with his publisher was as close and intimate as ever to the end.
The last month of Gifford's life was but a slow dying. He was sleepless, feverish, oppressed by an extreme difficulty of breathing, which often entirely deprived him of speech; and his sight had failed. Towards the end of his life he would sometimes take up a pen, and after a vain attempt to write, would throw it down, saying, "No, my work is done!" Even thinking caused him pain. As his last hour drew near, his mind began to wander. "These books have driven me mad," he once said, "I must read my prayers." He passed gradually away, his pulse ceasing to beat five hours before his death. And then he slept out of life, on December 31, 1826, in his 68th year—a few months before the death of Canning.
Mr. Gifford desired that he should be buried in the ground attached to Grosvenor Chapel, South Audley Street, where he had interred Annie Davies, his faithful old housekeeper, but his friends made application for his interment in Westminster Abbey, which was acceded to, and he was buried there accordingly on January 8, 1827, immediately under the monuments of Camden and Garrick. He was much richer at the time of his death than he was at all aware of, for he was perfectly indifferent about money. Indeed, he several times returned money to Mr. Murray, saying that "he had been too liberal." He left £25,000 of personal property, a considerable part of which he left to the relatives of Mr. Cookesley, the surgeon of Ashburton, who had been to him so faithful and self-denying a friend in his early life. To Mr. Murray he left £100 as a memorial, and also 500 guineas, to enable him to reimburse a military gentleman, to whom, jointly with Mr. Cookesley, he appears to have been bound for that sum at a former period.
Gifford has earned, but it is now generally recognised that he has unjustly earned, the character of a severe, if not a bitter critic. Possessing an unusually keen discernment of genuine excellence, and a scathing power of denunciation of what was false or bad in literature, he formed his judgments in accordance with a very high standard of merit. Sir Walter Scott said of his "Baviad and Mæviad, that "he squashed at one blow a set of coxcombs who might have humbugged the world long enough." His critical temper, however, was in truth exceptionally equable; regarding it as his duty to encourage all that was good and elevating, and relentlessly to denounce all that was bad or tended to lower the tone of literature, he conscientiously acted up to the standard by which he judged others, and never allowed personal feeling to intrude upon his official judgments.
It need scarcely be said that he proved himself an excellent editor, and that he entertained a high idea of the duties of that office. William Jerdan, who was introduced to Gifford by Canning, said: "I speak of him as he always was to me—full of gentleness, a sagacious adviser and instructor, upon so comprehensive a scale, that I never met his superior among the men of the age most renowned for vast information, and his captivating power in communicating it." His sagacity and quickness of apprehension were remarkable, as was also the extraordinary rapidity with which he was able to eviscerate a work, and summarize its contents in a few pages.
The number of articles which he himself wrote was comparatively small, for he confined himself for the most part to revising and improving the criticisms of others, and though in thus dealing with articles submitted to him he frequently erased what the writers considered some of their best criticisms, he never lost their friendship and support. He disliked incurring any obligation which might in any degree shackle the expression of his free opinions. In conjunction with Mr. Murray, he laid down a rule, which as we have already seen was advocated by Scott, and to which no exception has ever been made, that every writer in the Quarterly should receive payment for his contribution. On one occasion, when a gentleman in office would not receive the money, the article was returned. "I am not more certain of many conjectures," says Jerdan, "than I am of this, that he never propagated a dishonest opinion nor did a dishonest act."
Gifford took no notice of the ferocious attacks made upon him by Hunt and Hazlitt. Holding, as he did, that inviolable secrecy was one of the prime functions of an editor—though the practice has since become very different—he never attempted to vindicate himself, or to reveal the secret as to the writers of the reviews. In accordance with his plan of secrecy, he desired Dr. Ireland, his executor, to destroy all confidential letters, especially those relating to the Review, so that the names of the authors, as well as the prices paid for each article, might never be known.
In society, of which he saw but little, except at Mr. Murray's, he was very entertaining. He told a story remarkably well; and had an inexhaustible supply; the archness of his eyes and countenance making them all equally good.