MEMOIR

OF

WILLIAM GIFFORD.

WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.

LONDON:

WHITTAKER, TREACHER, And Arnot,

AVE-MARIA-LANE.

MDCCCXXIX.

INTRODUCTION.

THE recent death of Mr WILLIAM GIFFORD will, it is thought, render a republication of his amusing account of his early life, at this moment, more directly welcome to the subscribers to this collection. As supplying one of the most striking instances on record of literary self-advancement, and the conquest obtained by an acute mind over unfavourable circumstances, it has always been deemed interesting, and can scarcely fail proving still more so when thus timely set off by a brief narration of the later career of this eminent critic, which it will be our duty to supply by way of sequel.

MEMOIR

ог

WILLIAM GIFFORD.

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.*

name,

The matter is of no consequence-no, not even to myself. From my family 1 derived nothing but a which is more, perhaps, than I shall leave: but, to check the sneers of rude vulgarity, that family was among the most ancient and respectable of this part of the country, and, not more than three generations from the present, was counted among the wealthiest. Σκιας οναρ !

H