ment, both in prose and verse, in a strain of vulgar ríbaldry, in which (unlike the usual stile of his works) he displayed more malice than humour. And thus ended this controversy, so little creditable to either of the parties concerned. A contemporary writer, in a review of the compositions of the rival bards, thus alludes to their dispute: "In a prose postscript to his poems, Peter attacks several writers whom he conceives to be his opponents in anonymous productions; and among others the author of the Baviad, who has not been tardy in returning blow for blow. This war of words, and of very foul words, brings to our recollection a simile in the conclusion of a humorous piece of fugitive poetry, which much diverted us nearly half a century ago, and which we now quote from memory: "So when a chimney-sweep and barber fight, Till, in the dust they raise, the combatants are lost."* Justice to the memory of Mr Gifford demands that we should not close the account of this affair without observing that the truly dishonourable imputations, which, in his reckless indignation Dr Wolcot had cast on the character of the former, were destitute of the slightest foundation in anything like fact. Our author therefore, (who, notwithstanding the acrimony of his style, possessed certainly much constitutional coolness of temper,) acted wisely perhaps in treating with contempt the last ebullition of the venom of his irritated adversary. The only tangible accusation which Dr Wolcot brought forward against the author of the Baviad,' was that of procuring subscriptions for a work which he never intended to publish. This was successfully repelled by the appearance of the Translation of Juvenal,' which was printed in 1802. The circumstances which induced him to undertake this work, and those which occasioned the long delay of the publication, are detailed in the prefatory memoir, and have been already noticed. His conduct, with regard to the subscriptions, may be stated in his own words. After mentioning his determination, when at Oxford, " to renounce the publication for the present," he adds:-" In pursuance of this resolution, I wrote to my friend in the country (the Rev. Ser * Monthly Review for August 1800. vington Savery,) requesting him to return the subscription-money in his hands to the subscribers. He did not approve of my plan; nevertheless he promised, in a letter which now lies before me, to comply with it; and in a subsequent one, added that he had already begun to do so.-For myself, I also made several repayments; and trusted a sum of money to make others with a fellowcollegian, who, not long after, fell by his own hands in the presence of his father. But there were still some whose abode could not be discovered, and others on whom to press the taking back of eight shillings would neither be decent nor respectful: even from these I ventured to flatter myself that I should find pardon, when on some future day I presented them with the work (which I was still secretly determined to complete) rendered more worthy of their patronage, and increased by notes, which I now perceived to be absolutely necessary, to more than double its proposed size.' ""* The anxiety which Mr Gifford manifests to set in a fair light his conduct, with regard to the subscription, was probably occasioned by the inculpatory animadversions of Peter Pindar; and it is no unreasonable conjecture that to the sarcastic allusions of the satirist to his early employment, we owe the autobiographical narrative which has been so much and so deservedly admired. The English version of Juvenal's Satires, which occupied a considerable portion of the life of the translator, may be regarded as his most important literary undertaking; and when at length it was perfected by the corrections of his friends, and his own revisions and improvements, it issued from the press with every possible advantage, headed by a Dedication to his patron, Lord Grosvenor," with admiration of his talents and virtues." 6 The following character of the work appeared in the Monthly Review:' "In the translation before us the Roman satirist appears with great advantage. Mr Gifford has caught the spirit and style of his author; and he has, in general, accomplished his endeavour, which was to make Juvenal speak as he would probably have spoken if he had lived among us. Excepting Dr Johnson's admirable imitations of the third and tenth Satires, we know not any prior version in our language which could convey to the English reader so complete an idea of the stateliness, force and point, which are the prominent features of the compositions of this bard. It is needless to mention the translations of Stapleton, Holiday, Dryden and his coadjutors, and Owen, since they will not endure a comparison with that of Mr Gifford; which conveys the sense and manner of the original in easy and flowing verse."+ This version is undoubtedly in general correct and spirited; * Autobiog. Mem. of W. Gifford, p. 24. + Monthly Review for April 1802. 1 6 but there is a coarseness of expression observable, from which none of Mr Gifford's works are entirely exempt, and the language is occasionally diffuse and inharmonious. Some strictures on the translation appeared in the Critical Review,' which Mr Gifford thought of sufficient importance to merit an Examination,' in a pamphlet which he published in 1803; and in the following year he produced a Supplement to the Examination.' Notwithstanding its faults however, and the criticisms with which they were visited, the work was well received by the public, and a second edition appeared in 1806.-Previously to the republication of his Juvenal, Mr Gifford presented himself to the literary world in a new point of view, as editor of the plays of Philip Massinger. This was an office for which his critical judgment, extensive reading, and more especially his intimate acquaintance with the old English drama, qualified him in a high degree. But it was no small drawback on his merits as a commentator, that he was accustomed to treat with unnecessary harshness and contempt those who had occupied the field of criticism before him, as if they were intruders on his own peculiar domain. He exposed the mistakes of his predecessor, Mr Monck Mason, with all the acerbity of reproof and overwhelming ridicule which he had before applied to the Della Cruscans and Jacobins; seemingly quite unconscious that his own judgment and accuracy were not absolutely unimpeachable, and that it is a much easier task to point out the errors of others than to avoid similar imperfections.* It may be proper to substantiate this observation; for which purpose we adduce the remarks of a writer in Dr Aikin's Athenæum, on Mr Gifford's edition of Massinger's works::-" In the Maid of Honour,' Act ii. scene 2, the Page says to Sylli, 'hold my cloak While I take a leap at her lips; do it, and neatly; Sylli. Tamberlane in little! Am I turn'd Turk! What an office am I put to!' "The editor's note upon turn'd Turk,' is ' Is my situation or occupation changed?' But it is a manifest allusion to the historical anecdote, that Tamerlane, after making a captive of the Turkish emperor Bajazet, set his foot upon his back while he mounted upon his horse. In the Picture,' Act iii. scene 6, on the passage 'Such a soldier and a courtier never came A note says, "Mr M. Mason reads 'Aula Regalis.' Why this change should be thought necessary, I cannot tell. Alba regalis' was no uncommon expression at that time, and indeed is used by more than one writer for the English court." "It would have been gratifying to the curious reader if Mr G. had adduced his instances; but, in fact, Alba Regalis is the name of the ancient capital of Hungary, in which country the scene of the play is laid.”—Athen. v. i. p. 19. Thus, in spite of the opposition called forth by his unceremonious behaviour towards his literary competitors, Mr Gifford's industry and abilities had raised him to great celebrity as a critic, when he assumed the office of judge, to pass sentence ex cathedra on contemporary productions of the press. In 1802 a new critical journal was established at Edinburgh, the conductors of which, by assuming a bold and decisive style of animadversion, by their free and discursive manner of treating the subjects which they selected for discussion, and by their unreserved expression of sentiments in favour of liberalism in religion and politics, united with considerable ability and address, succeeded in erecting a literary tribunal, to whose claims to superiority the older courts of criticism were obliged to give way. It was not be expected that the Edinburgh Reviewers should be permitted to retain their ascendancy unquestioned. As theirs was a quarterly publication, one of a similar description was projected on opposite principles, as relating to the affairs of church and state. Mr Gifford, who is said to have proposed the undertaking, was entrusted with its management; and he accordingly engaged in the office of editor of the Quarterly Review, the first number of which was published at the commencement of the year 1809, by Mr Murray, bookseller of Albemarle street, London, who has ever since continued to be proprietor of the work. Supported as this journal has been by ministerial and clerical patronage, by the liberality of the publisher, and by the general ability of the conductor and his coadjutors, it has met with all the success which might have been anticipated; and, as a counterpoise to the occasional excesses of the rival review, it has not been without utility. Much more extensive however would have been the claims of the editor to the gratitude of the public, if he had not suffered his critical judgment to be warped by prejudice; systematically estimating the merits of a writer, no matter upon what subject, by the test of his political tenets, as if the sin of heresy in politics entailed on the unfortunate culprit incapacity as to literature and science. No one knew better than Mr Gifford how to find out the weak points of a chain of argument, or to detect faults in composition, or errors in judgment; but not content with severely exposing such blemishes in the works of an author whom he had any motives for condemning, he sometimes resorted to the most disingenuous artifice of creating the blunders which he imputed to his victims, that he might have an opportunity of holding them up to ridicule and contempt.* Other considerations, besides those of a political nature, sometimes influenced the conduct of Mr Gifford as a literary censor. Had * See critique on Lord George Grenville's Portugal, a Poem,' in Quarterly Review, vol. viii.-and the author's remonstrance in Valpy's New Review, No. 1, for January 1813. he been endowed with liberality of sentiment, he would have felt that a review conducted by a successful rival was a most unbecoming vehicle for such an article as the critique on Dr Badham's • Translation of Juvenal;' and he seemed to act as if he conceived that the interests of morality might be postponed to those of his publisher, when he delayed the reprobation of the enormities of Lord Byron's rambling muse till the pecuniary profits arising from the productions of the noble bard were transferred to another bookseller. But however objectionable his mode of proceeding occasionally as a reviewer, he was not chargeable with the inconsistency which was exhibited by some of his coadjutors, who, having embarked in life as enthusiastic admirers of the French revolution, and signalized themselves by Utopian schemes for the amelioration of civil society, which subjected them to the satire of the Anti-Jacobins, became sudden converts to the doctrine of expediency, and intolerant persecutors of those who retained the sentiments which they had themselves thought proper to abandon. Compared with such men, he may be deemed an honest and disinterested writer, acting, as consistently as he could, according to the principles he had originally adopted.* The author of * The following remarks on the character and conduct of the editor of the Quarterly Review, though they include some questionable positions, are adduced, as substantially corroborating the estimate of Mr Gifford's critical honesty and capacity hazarded above. "Mr Gifford was not a man of genius, nor an original writer; but he was an acute scholar, possessed of sound judgment, the result of long years of experience subtle-splenetic-acute gifted with tact, and with that knowledge of minutiæ in conducting a work of this nature, which in the aggregate is of infinite importance. A writer of first-rate genius and talent is rarely equal to such a task: his attention is generally concentrated in one point, and he is unable to view more at a time. No man of this class, who attempts it, will meet with Mr Gifford's success: a wriggling, shrewd, persevering, unsensitive mind is best adapted for it. Mr Gifford saw a writer's weakness at a glance: he knew how to gloss over strong truths, or to distort them, so that the reader could scarcely suspect the deception practised upon him. He was well acquainted with the dispositions of mankind, and had the power of multiplying the fears of the timid for his own uses, and of marshalling all his readers' prejudices on his side, to promote the end of his party and torture the victim of his political indignation. Mr Gifford had no powers of humour-the most vulgar was too polished a weapon for his coarse hands; his satire was horse-play, as Dryden terms it; the lap-stone and hammer of his early years were his favourite weapons to the end of his career. His unflinching obduracy of purpose, and sacrifice even of reason herself, to serve his political views, were rarely before equalled, and will never be surpassed. These were the best qualifications for supporting such a work as the Quarterly Review. Mr Gifford, too, was invulnerable where most of his party were defenceless. He was no renegade in politics; chance threw tory bread in his way in early life, and gratitude was his subsequent principle of action. He must have been amused at being ultimately aided by contributors to the |