After exposing him in this manner to the gaze of the admiring crowd that throng about, they proceed to the public-house he has been in the habit of using, where his “wake” is celebrated in joviality and mirth, with a gallon of ale at his expense. It often happens that each will contribute a trifle towards a further prolongation of the carousal, to entrap others into the same deadly snare; and the day is spent in baiting for the chances of the next morning, as none are exempt who are not at their post before the prescribed hour.
I am, &c.
W. G.
William Gifford, Esq.
On Sunday morning, the 31st of December, 1826, at twenty minutes before one o’clock, died, “at his house in James-street, Buckingham-gate, in the seventy-first year of his age, William Gifford, Esq., author of the ‘Baviad and Mæviad,’ translator of ‘Juvenal and Persius,’ and editor of the ‘Quarterly Review,’ from its commencement down to the beginning of the year just past. To the translation of ‘Juvenal’ is prefixed a memoir of himself, which is perhaps as modest and pleasant a piece of autobiography as ever was written.”—The Times, January 1, 1827.
Interesting
Memoir of Mr. Gifford.
By Himself—verbatim.
I am about to enter on a very uninteresting subject: but all my friends tell me that it is necessary to account for the long delay of the following work; and I can only do it by adverting to the circumstances of my life. Will this be accepted as an apology?
I know but little of my family and that little is not very precise: My great-grandfather (the most remote of it, that I ever recollect to have heard mentioned) possessed considerable property at Halsbury, a parish in the neighbourhood of Ashburton; but whether acquired or inherited, I never thought of asking, and do not know.
He was probably a native of Devonshire, for there he spent the last years of his life; spent them, too, in some sort of consideration, for Mr. T. (a very respectable surgeon of Ashburton) loved to repeat to me, when I first grew into notice, that he had frequently hunted with his hounds.[12]