WILLIAM GIFFORD.
The field of literature seems always to have had a special charm for shoemakers. If the reader will glance for a moment at the list of names given at the end of this book, this fact will be at once apparent. Half, or more than half, the names given in that list are in some way or other connected with literature. The connection is but slight in many instances, perhaps, and the reputation it conferred only local and temporary. Few of our shoemakers, even though we have thought well to style them “illustrious,” can be said to have made a great and lasting name in the world of letters; and none of them it must be confessed have attained to first rank as prose or poetical writers. But there are worthies in our list, associated alike with the humble craft of shoemaking and the higher walks of literature, whose names the world will not willingly let die, and we venture to think that the subject of this sketch is one of the number.
William Gifford was the first editor of the London Quarterly Review. The high and influential position held by this journal was mainly due in the first instance to Gifford’s talent and excellent management. The London Quarterly was started in opposition to the famous Edinburgh Quarterly; George Canning, the celebrated statesman, and Sir Walter Scott, the great novelist, being the prime movers and early patrons of the enterprise, for the Edinburgh, under the clever management of Jeffrey, and supported by such writers as Sydney Smith and Brougham, was then too liberal in its tone to suit the taste of the brilliant Foreign Secretary and his Tory friends. It was no slight testimony to the abilities of the man who was chosen as the first editor of the new Quarterly that his election should have been cordially approved by the first of Scottish novelists, and one of the most influential of English statesmen.
Gifford was the author of two satirical poems, the “Baviad” and “Maeviad,” directed against the tawdry and sentimental rhymesters of a certain school which flourished in his day.[25] His scathing satire succeeded in putting an end to their trash. Gifford published also a translation of the Latin poets, Juvenal and Persius. To the latter he prefixed the story of his own early life as a poor cobbler’s apprentice. From this interesting autobiography the materials for the following sketch have been chiefly selected. William Gifford’s best title to fame was, no doubt, his edition of the “Early English Dramatists”—Ford, Massinger, Shirley, and Ben Jonson. His generous and able vindication of Jonson reflects credit both upon the critic and the poet. It should be added that Gifford’s editorship of the Quarterly extended over fifteen years, and that during the whole of this period he was the writer of a large number of its most able articles.
Having taken a glimpse of the work accomplished by William Gifford as a critic, a scholar, and an editor in the latter years of his life, let us turn to look at his circumstances in boyhood and youth, when, as a miserable cobbler’s apprentice, he began to yearn after knowledge and to cherish ambitious dreams. The contrast between the first and last scenes in the drama of life could hardly be more wonderful than that which is presented in the history of the man who passed from the cobbler’s stool to the editor’s chair.
William Gifford was born at the small town of Ashburton, in South Devon, in 1757. His father, who was a man of spendthrift and profligate habits, died of the effects of his evil conduct before he had attained the age of forty. In twelve months afterward Gifford’s mother died, leaving William, and a little brother two years old, orphans, and, it would seem, penniless. As no home could be found for the infant, he was sent to the workhouse. William, then thirteen years of age, fell into the hands of a man named Carlisle, who had stood as his godfather, a worthless fellow, who had appropriated the few things left by the mother, on pretence of claiming them for debt. This man put William to school, where he began to show signs of ability; but he was allowed no chance of making progress; for, at the end of three months, grudging the slight cost of his tuition, Carlisle took the boy from his books and playmates, and put him to the plough. It was soon found that he was too weak for such heavy work. His guardian now tried to get the boy out of hand altogether, by sending him off to Newfoundland as an errand-boy in a grocery store. This unkind project, however, being doomed to failure, it was resolved that the troublesome charge should be got rid of by making him a sailor.
We give the account of what happened at this period in his own words: “My godfather had now humbler views for me, and I had no 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 years of age. It will easily be conceived 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 it was not so much on account of this as of my being prevented reading, as my master did not possess a single book of any description, excepting a Coasting Pilot.”