GIFFORD, William (1757-1826), publicist and man of letters, was born at Ashburton, Devon, in April 1757. Having as a shoemaker’s apprentice manifested a remarkable aptitude for intellectual pursuits, he was by the charity of friends enabled to complete a previously imperfect school education, and ultimately to proceed in his twenty-third year to Oxford, where he was appointed a Bible clerk in Exeter College. Leaving the university shortly after graduation in 1782, he for some years acted as tutor to Lord Belgrave, whom he accompanied on two prolonged Continental tours. After having settled in London, he in 1794 published his first work, a satirical piece, after Persius, entitled the Baviad, successfully aimed at a numerous school of second-rate writers then popularly known as the Della Cruscans. A second satire of a similar description, the Maεviad, directed against the corruptions of the drama, appeared in 1795. About this time Gifford became acquainted with Canning, with whose help he in August 1797 originated a weekly newspaper of Conservative politics entitled the Anti-Jacobin, which, however, in the following year ceased to be published. An English version of Juvenal, on which he had been for many years engaged, appeared iu 1802; to this an autobiographical notice of the translator was prefixed. Two years afterwards Gifford published an annotated edition of the plays of Massinger; and in 1809, when the Quarterly Review was projected, he was entrusted with the management of that publication. It is on all hands conceded that the success which attended the Quarterly from the outset was due in no small degree to the ability and tact with which Gifford discharged his editorial duties. His connexion with the Review continued until within about two years of his death, ...