with him; and I experienced a warm and cordial reception, a kind and affectionate esteem, that has known neither diminution nor interruption from that hour to this, a period of twenty years!*

In his lordship's house I proceeded with Juvenal, till I was called upon to accompany his son (one of the most amiable and accomplished young noblemen that this country, fertile in such characters, could ever boast) to the continent. With him, in two successive tours, I spent many years; years of which the remembrance will always be dear to me, from the recollection that a friendship was then contracted, which time and a more intimate knowledge of each other, have mellowed into a regard that forms at once the pride and happiness of my life.

It is long since I have been returned and settled in the bosom of competence and peace; my translation frequently engaged my thoughts, but I had lost the ardour and the confidence of youth, and was seriously doubtful of my abilities to do it justice. I have wished a thousand times that I could decline it altogether; but the ever-recurring idea that there were people of the description already mentioned, who had just and forcible claims on me for the due performance of my engagement, forbad the thought; and I slowly proceeded towards the completion of a work in which I should never have engaged, had my friend's inexperience, or my own, suffered us to suspect for a

* I have a melancholy satisfaction in recording that this revered friend and patron lived to witness my grateful acknowledgment of his kindness. He survived the appearance of the translation but a very few days, and I paid the last sad duty to his memory, by attending his remains to the grave. To me-this laborious work has not been happy: the same disastrous event that marked its commencement, has embittered its conclusion; and frequently forced upon my recollection the calamity of the rebuilder of Jericho, "He laid the foundation thereof in Abiram, his first born, and set up the gates thereof in his youngest son, Segub."—-1806.

moment the labour, and the talents of more than one kind, absolutely necessary to its success in any tolerable degree. Such as I could make it, it is now before the public.

majora canamus.

SEQUEL

TO THE

MEMOIR OF WILLIAM GIFFORD.

THE subsequent life of the author of the foregoing interesting narrative, although doubtless possessing an abundance of literary anecdote and incident of considerable interest, had it been autobiographically continued, supplies little material for narrative in the usual form. During his residence with earl Grosvenor, Mr Gifford seems to have been principally occupied in his translation of Juvenal, which was, however, preceded in publication by his well known Baviad,' a paraphrase on the first satire of Persius, which appeared in 1794. This poem, the first which called him into general notice, was directed against the Della Crusca school of poetasters, so called from the late Robert Merry, who adopted that signature, and in conjunction with Mrs Piozzi, Miles Peter Andrews, Mr Parsons, Mrs Robinson, and a few more of both sexes, inundated the newspapers and periodicals with scraps of verses, in which a mass of tawdry affectation and false feeling was but inadequately atoned for by a few occasional gleams of imagination and pathos. As the members of this confederacy, besides assuming a spirit of literary dictation, were in the habit of heaping the most fulsome flattery upon each other, nothing could form fairer game for satire. It has been questioned, however, whether the folly of

K

this harmless class required all the caustic severity which, in this instance, it extorted; and the rude personality of the satirist towards those of the softer sex, in particular, has been thought more indicative of the deficiency in courtesy and refinement which might be expected from his early disadvantages, than of his residence in a nobleman's house, in which woman notoriously engrossed a very large share of attention. In 1794 appeared the Mæviad,' a satire of the same class, in imitation of the tenth satire of the first book of Horace; in which, although equally personal, he is certainly less unnecessarily virulent. Following up a line of composition so congenial with his temper and talents, he published in 1800 his Epistle to Peter Pindar,' an attack which brought him little beyond disquiet; the laughter of the one satirist being quite as formidable as the gall of the other. Wolcot was also an unscrupulous man, and could advert to the personal character of patrons as well as clients, and suggest motives and employments, in a species of banter between jest and earnest, of a more annoying nature than even direct accusation. In 1802, Mr Gifford sent out his principal work, his English version of Juvenal, which production engrossed the greater part of his life, received the correction of his friends, and was sent into the world with every possible advantage, headed by a dedication to the late earl Grosvenor, "with admiration of his talents and virtues." It is a spirited and able translation, although occasionally diffuse and inharmonious, and not unfrequently coarse in its phraseology and diction. As already observed, it was to this publication he prefixed the very pleasing Memoir which has entitled him to a place in this collection. Contemporaneously with his publication of the Baviad' Mæviad,' Mr Gifford became editor of the 'Anti-Jacobin;' which periodical, however well known in its day, is now chiefly remembered as the periodical vehicle of the polished, keen, and playful

and