Thus, to the world of great whilst others crawl, Things that too oft provoke the public scorn; Now boasting Whitbread seriously did declare, On which the king with wonder swiftly cried : "What, if they reach to Kew, then, side by side, What would they do, what, what, placed end to end?' To whom, with knitted, calculating brow, The man of beer most solemnly did vow, Almost to Windsor that they would extend: Now did the king for other beers inquire, This was a puzzling disagreeing question, A charming place beneath the grates 'Tis hops that give a bitterness to beer, Hops grow in Kent, says Whitbread, and elsewhere. Quare. Is there no cheaper stuff? where doth it dwell? And then put up his ass's-skin. To Whitbread now deigned majesty to say: Whitbread, are all your horses fond of hay?' 'Grains, grains,' said majesty, 'to fill their crops? Grains, grains,-that comes from hops-yes, hops, hops, hops?' Here was the king, like hounds sometimes, at fault'Sire,' said the humble brewer, give me leave Your sacred majesty to undeceive; Grains, sire, are never made from hops, but malt.' 'True,' said the cautious monarch with a smile, Now did the king admire the bell so fine, On which the observant man who fills a throne, Exclaimed: 'O heavens! and can my swine Heavens can my pigs compare, sire, with pigs royal?' On which the brewer bowed, and said: 'Good God!' Who, bridling in her chin divine, Crossed her fair hands, a dear old maid, For such high honour done her father's swine. Now did his majesty, so gracious, say 'Whitbread, d'ye nick the exciseman now and then? Hae, Whitbread, when d' ye think to leave off trade? Hae? what? Miss Whitbread 's still a maid, a maid? What, what's the matter with the men? 'D'ye hunt?-hae hunt? No no, you are too old; I'll prick you every year, man, I declare; Hae, Whitbread? You have feathered well your nest. Then searched his brains with ruminating eye; But ere the man of malt an answer found, Quick on his heel, lo, majesty turned round, Skipped off, and balked the honour of reply. . . . Lord Gregory. 'Ah ope, Lord Gregory, thy door, A midnight wanderer sighs; 'Who comes with woe at this drear night, A pilgrim of the gloom? If she whose love did once delight, 'But shouldst thou not poor Marion know, And think the storms that round me blow, The editions of Wolcot's works-1788, 1792, 1794-96 (4 vols.), and 1812 (5 vols.)—are none of them quite complete. Some of the last of his seventy separate publications only appeared in 1814-17. Selections were published in 1824 and 1834. Many verses published under the name of 'Peter Pindar,' 'Peter Pindar, jun.,' &c. were not Wolcot's, but by various imitators. William Gifford (1756-1826) was born at Ashburton in Devonshire. His father, a ne'er-dowell glazier, died of drink in 1767; his mother died a year afterwards; and after some little education, the boy was at thirteen placed on board a coasting-vessel by his godfather, a man supposed to have benefited himself at the expense of Gifford's parents. It will be easily conceived,' he recorded, '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, I can safely say it was not so much on account of this, as of my being precluded from all possibility of reading: as my master did not possess, nor do I recollect seeing, during the whole time of my abode with him, a single book of any description, except the Coasting Pilot! The cabinboy was often seen by the fishwives of his native town running about the beach in a ragged jacket and trousers, and thus their tale, often repeated, awakened Ashburton to pity for the orphan, as also to resentment against the man who had brought him so low. His godfather was concussed into taking him from the sea, and again he was put to school, where he made rapid progress, and soon hoped to succeed his old and infirm schoolmaster. But in 1772 his godfather, sure he had got learning enough, put him apprentice to a shoemaker; and this new profession Gifford hated with a perfect hatred. He had but one book in the world, and that was a treatise on algebra, a subject of which he had no knowledge; but meeting with Fenning's Introduction, he mastered both works. This was not done,' he remembered, 'without difficulty. I had not a farthing on earth, nor a friend to give me one pen, ink, and paper, therefore, were for the most part as completely out of my reach as a crown and sceptre. There was indeed a resource, but the utmost caution and secrecy were necessary in applying it. I beat out pieces of leather as smooth as possible, and wrought my problems on them with a blunted awl: for the rest, my memory was tenacious, and I could multiply and divide by it to a great extent.' He next tried poetry, and some of his 'lamentable doggerel' fell into the hands of a surgeon of Ashburton, who raised money to buy him off from his apprenticeship; and in little more than two years Gifford had made such extraordinary progress in study that he was pronounced fit for Oxford. In 1779 a Bible clerkship was procured for him at Exeter College, and this, with occasional assistance from the country, enabled him to live till, in 1782, he took his B.A. He had been accustomed to correspond on literary subjects with a friend in London, his letters being enclosed in covers sent, to save postage, to Lord Grosvenor. The direction having been once inadvertently omitted, the franker, supposing the letter to be meant for himself, opened and read it. He was struck with the contents, and after seeing the writer, and hearing his story, undertook his present support and future establishment; and meanwhile invited him to come and live with him. 'These,' the grateful scholar testified, 'were not words of course: they were more than fulfilled in every point. I did go and reside with him, and I experienced a warm and cordial reception, and a kind and affectionate esteem, that has known neither diminution nor interruption from that hour to this, a period of twenty years.' Part of this time was spent in attending his patron's son, Lord Belgrave, on a tour of Europe, which greatly informed the mind of the tutor. He appeared as author in 1794. His first production was a satirical poem, The Baviat, directed against a group of sentimental poetasters of that day, known from their hobbies as the Della Cruscan School-Mrs Piozzi, Mrs Robinson, Mr Greathead, Mr Merry, and some others (see page 473)-conspicuous for their affectation and bad taste, and their high-flown compliments to one another. 'There was a specious brilliancy in these exotics,' Gifford complained, which dazzled the native grubs, who had scarce ever ventured beyond a sheep, and a crook, and a rose-tree grove; with an ostentatious display of "blue hills," and "crashing torrents," and "petrifying suns."' Gifford's vigorous exposure of the 'splay-foot madrigals' and 'nambypamby madrigals of love,' in Scott's phrase, 'squabashed the Della Cruscans at one blow.' Anna Matilda, Laura Maria, Edwin, Orlando, and the other high-flown heralds of log-rolling sank into instant and irretrievable contempt. The satire, in the form of a conversation between the author, Persius, represented by P., and a friend, F., was universally read and admired; now it seems often unreasonably savage and unfair. But lines like these can hardly be described as wholly temporary or antiquated in application: Degeneracy of Modern Literature. Oh for the good old times! when all was new, Now all is changed! We fume and fret, poor elves, F. "Tis pitiful, Heaven knows; 'Tis wondrous pitiful. E'en take the prose : But for the poetry-oh, that, my friend, I still aspire- nay, smile not-to defend. From the Portrait by John Hoppner, R.A., in the National And, envying the fame he cannot hope, Mrs Piozzi's share in this fantastic garland of exotic verse is hit off in one felicitous couplet : See Thrale's gay widow with a satchel roam, And what they do not understand, adore; These, when some lucky hit, or lucky price, The Baviad was a paraphrase of the first satire of Persius. In the year following, encouraged by its success, Gifford produced The Mæviad, an imitation of Horace, levelled largely at the corruptors of the drama; the little-known poetasters Bavius and Mævius being stigmatised together as poetasters by Virgil, while Mævius is contemptuously treated by Horace. In the Mæviad also the Della Cruscan authors-who attempted dramas as well as odes and elegies-are gibbeted in satiric verse; but Gifford was sufficiently catholic in his dislikes to include O'Keefe, Holcroft, and Morton among the objects of his most vehement condemnation. The plays of Kotzebue and Schiller, then first translated and much in vogue, he also confounded in the same denunciation as 'heavy, lumbering, monotonous stupidity,' worse even than 'the lively nonsense of O'Keefe and Co.' Both satires are strangely planless, rambling, miscellaneous, at times irrelevant, and not even always satirical or abusive. Gifford could praise with perspicacity, as when in the Baviad he laments that lords and dukes were victims of metromania, 'curs'd with a sickly taste, while Burns' pure nurture runs to waste.' And a good bit of the Maviad is eulogy of the character and art of his friend Hoppner the painter. James Boswell comes in repeatedly for severe treatment; and some of the most vicious remarks are not in the text but in the footnotes, which often fill more than half the page. Thus: Wonderful is the profundity of Bathos! I thought that O'Keefe had reached the bottom of it; but, as uncle Bowling says, I thought a d- n'd lie for Holcroft, Reynolds, and Morton have sunk beneath him. They have happily found "in the lowest deep a lower still," and persevere in exploring it with an emulation that does them honour.' Holcroft 'is a poor stupid wretch, to whom infidelity and disloyalty have given a momentary notoriety, . . . and opened the theatre to two or three of his grovelling and senseless productions.' In 1797 a certain Williams, who assumed the name of Anthony Pasquin for his ribald strains' (a victim of a different type), aggrieved at his well-merited castigation in the Baviad, was nonsuited in an action against Gifford's publisher; though Gifford's statement was 'that he was so lost to every sense of decency and shame that his acquaintance was infamy and his touch poison.' The Tory bias is plain here and elsewhere. The following passage from the Maviad explains the satirist's design: Sick of th' eternal croak, which, ever near, Of this hoarse rout; I seized at length the wand; Gifford in 1800 tried a third satire, an Epistle to Peter Pindar (Dr Wolcot), which, being founded on personal animosity, is more remarkable for its passionate vehemence and abuse than for its point or justice, felicity or correctness. Wolcot replied with A Cut at a Cobbler, and, by-and-by, with a personal assault (page 663). The notoriety of Gifford's satires pointed him out as the man to edit the Anti-Jacobin, a weekly paper started by Canning and others to ridicule and expose the political agitators of the times. Established in November 1797, it survived only till July 1798, but the connection thus formed with politicians and men of rank was afterwards serviceable to Gifford; he was made paymaster of the gentlemen-pensioners and commissioner of the lottery, with an income from the two offices of £900. In 1802 he published a translation of Juvenal, to which was prefixed his sketch of his own life, a simple and unaffected autobiography. When his Juvenal was attacked in the Critical Review, Gifford replied in An Examination, which pleasantly compared his reviewer to a toad: During my apprenticeship, I enjoyed perhaps as many places as Scrub [in Farquhar's Beaux' Stratagem]; though I suspect they were not altogether so dignified: the chief of them was that of a planter of cabbages in a bit of ground which my master held near the town. It was the decided opinion of Panurge that the life of a cabbage-planter was the safest and pleasantest in the world. I found it safe enough, I confess, but not altogether pleasant; and therefore took every oppor tunity of attending to what I liked better, which happened to be, watching the actions of insects and reptiles, and, among the rest, of a huge toad. I never loved toads, but I never molested them; for my mother had early bid me remember that every living thing had the same Maker as myself; and the words always rang in my The toad, then, who had taken up his residence under a hollow stone in a hedge of blind nettles, I used to watch for hours together. It was a lazy, lumpish animal, that squatted on its belly, and perked up its hideous head with two glazed eyes, precisely like a Critical Reviewer. In this posture, perfectly satisfied with itself, it would remain as if it were a part of the stone, till the cheerful buzzing of some winged insect provoked it to give signs of life. The dead glare of its eyes then brightened into a vivid lustre, and it awkwardly shuffled to the entrance of its cell, and opened its detestable mouth to snap the passing fly or honey-bee. Since I have marked the manners of the Critical Reviewers, these passages of my youth have often occurred to me. ears. These are specimens of Gifford on Peter Pindar: But what is he, that with a Mohawk's air From noxious childhood to pernicious age, Separate to infamy, in every stage. Cornwall remembers yet his first employ, And shuddering tells with what infernal joy His little tongue in blasphemies was loos'd, His little hands in deeds of horror us'd; While mangled insects strew'd his cradle o'er, And limbs of birds distain'd his bib with gore. Lo here the reptile! who from some dark cell, Where all his veins with native poison swell, Crawls forth, a slimy toad, and spits, and spues The crude abortions of his loathsome muse, On all that Genius, all that Worth holds dear, Unsullied rank, and piety sincere ; While idiot mirth the base defilement lauds, And malice, with averted face, applauds ! Lo here the brutal sot! who, drench'd with gin. Squeals out (with oaths and blasphemies between) The impious song, the tale, the jest obscene; And careless views, amidst the barbarous roar, His few grey hairs strew, one by one, the floor! In Besides his version of Juvenal, Gifford translated Persius, and edited the plays of Massinger, Ford, and Shirley, and the works of Ben Jonson. 1808 John Murray, with the co-operation of Walter Scott and Southey, resolved on starting a review, in opposition to the now famous Edinburgh, and Gifford was selected as editor. In his hands the Quarterly Review became a powerful political and literary journal, to which leading statesmen and famous authors equally contributed. He continued to discharge his duties as editor until within two years of his death on 31st December 1826; and he was buried in Westminster Abbey. He Gifford was high-spirited, courageous, and sincere; but in most of his writings there was a strong tinge of personal acerbity and even virulence. was a good hater, and as he was opposed to all political visionaries and reformers, his wrath had seldom time to cool. Even where no such prejudices could interfere, his literary criticism was frequently disfigured by the same temper; whoever, dead or alive, had ventured to say aught against Ben Jonson, or write what he deemed unsatisfactory comments on his favourite dramatists, was assailed with a vehemence ludicrously disproportioned to the offence; too many of those whom he for one reason or another disapproved were described as toads and reptiles. His attacks on Hazlitt, Lamb, and Leigh Hunt-ay, and on Keats (for the Endymion article of 1818 was almost certainly his), in the Quarterly, have no pretensions to be fair or candid criticism. His object was to crush such authors as were opposed to the Government of the day, or who departed from his canons of literary propriety. Even the best and most spirited of his criticisms lack width of view and candour, and accordingly fail to produce their effect. Hazlitt returned his compliments in an open letter, and by a bitter attack on him in the Spirit of the Age. Looking with distrust and best service to literature was his edition of Ben Jonson, in which he successfully vindicated the great classic from unjust aspersions. His small but sinewy intellect, as a critic put it, was well employed in bruising the butterflies of the Della Cruscan Muse. Some of his shorter poemsone in affectionate remembrance of a faithful maidservant, one on a trip to Greenwich Hill on the 1st of May, &c.-are kindly, even tender; but his fame must rest on his incisiveness as satirist and his influence as critic and annotator. Possibly the story of his early struggles may be read when his other writings are forgotten. The Rolliad, a series of political satires written by some Whigs of wit and fashion, attracted universal attention and was wonderfully popular. The idea is original, though the authors had the Dunciad before their eyes; they cleverly burlesqued Homer and Virgil, Shakespeare and Milton, and imitated Dryden and Churchill; and the level of prose and verse is so high that it is strange both should have been so utterly forgotten. The Anti-Jacobin is, with a few brilliant exceptions, mainly a series of heavy political pamphlets; the Rolliad and its companion pieces are, on the whole, more varied and sprightly. But the innumerable topical allusions in the Rolliad, the large number of pieces that depend for their point on forgotten incidents and unimportant persons, have in this case hastened the oblivion that is the usual fate of political satire unless it dips deep into the elemental humour of human nature, and is the work, not of brilliant wits, but of a true genius. The greater ferocity of the Anti-Jacobin, its savage earnestness, is largely explained by the fact that the Rolliad appeared before the French Revolution had raised greater issues and stirred men's souls to their uttermost depths. The so-called Criticisms on the Rolliad appeared first in the Morning Herald, a London newspaper, in 1784-85, and were a succession of satires on Colonel John Rolle, afterwards Lord Rolle (1750-1842), a staunch adherent of Pitt, the blundering and passionate M.P. for Devon, who made himself obnoxious to the Opposition by his hostility to Fox. He lived to do homage to Queen Victoria at her coronation; but, eightyseven years old, he stumbled and fell on the steps of the throne, whereupon, as is well remembered, the young queen graciously and gracefully rose and came forward to meet him. In 1784 Pitt had been returned with an overwhelming majority. The Whigs, smarting under defeat, were naturally eager to show in every way their superiority in wit and eloquence over sheer weight of numbers-brought to bear in the House of Commons, as they maintained, mainly by the |