(1757-1826)
Gifford was the editor of the _Quarterly_ from its foundation in
February, 1809, until September, 1824, and undoubtedly established its
reputation for scurrility. It is probable that more reviews were
written, or directly inspired, by him than have been actually traced to
his pen; and, in any case, as Leigh Hunt puts it, he made it his
business to
See that others
Misdeem and miscontrue, like miscreant brothers;
Misquote, and misplace, and mislead, and misstate,
Misapply, misinterpret, misreckon, misdate,
Missinform, misconjecture, misargue, in short
Miss all that is good, that ye miss not the court.
Gifford was hated even more than his associates; not only, we fear, for
his venal sycophancy, but because he had been apprenticed to a shoemaker
and never concealed the lowness of his origin. Moreover, "the little
man, dumpled up together and so ill-made as to seem almost deformed,"
received from Fortune--
One eye not overgood,
Two sides that to their cost have stood
A ten years' hectic cough,
Aches, stitches, all the various ills
That swell the devilish doctor's bills,
And sweep poor mortals off.
Scott is almost alone in his generosity towards the learning and
industry of an editor who helped to make infamous the title of critic.
His original poems (_The Baviad_ and _The Moeviad_) have a certain
sledge-hammer merit; and he did yeoman service by suppressing the _Della
Cruscans_.
It was Gifford also "who did the butchering business in the
Anti-Jacobin." He was far heavier, in bludgeoning, than Jeffrey; while
Hazlitt epitomized his principles of criticism with his accustomed
vigour:--"He believes that modern literature should wear the fetters of
classical antiquity; that truth is to be weighed in the scales of
opinion and prejudice; that power is equivalent to right; that genius is
dependent on rules; that taste and refinement of language consist in
_word-catching_."
* * * * *
Gifford's review of _Ford's Weber_ is, perhaps, no more than can be
expected of the man who had edited _Massinger_ six years before he wrote
it; and produced a _Ben Jonson_ in 1816 and a _Ford_ in 1827. Of these
works Thomas Moore exclaimed "What a canker'd carle it is! Strange that
a man should be able to lash himself up into such a spiteful fury, not
only against the living but the dead, with whom he engages in a sort of
_sciomachy_ in every page. Poor dull and dead Malone is the shadow at
which he thrusts his 'Jonson,' as he did at poor Monck Mason, still
duller and deader, in his _Massinger_." Mr. A.H. Bullen, again, remarks
of his Ford, "Gifford was so intent on denouncing the inaccuracy of
others that he frequently failed to secure accuracy himself.... In
reading the old dramatists we do not want to be distracted by editorial
invectives and diatribes."