Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/544

454 and a schoolfellow in former days, and when he died he bequeathed to him his library.

"The last month of Gifford's life was but a slow dying," says Mr. Smiles. "He was sleepless, feverish, oppressed by an extreme difficulty of breathing, which often deprived him of speech; and his sight had failed. Towards the end of his life he would sometimes take up a pen, and after a vain attempt to write, would throw it down, saying, 'No, my work is done.' Even thinking caused him pain. As his last hour drew near, his mind began to wander. ’These books have driven me mad,' he once said; ’I must read my prayers.' He passed gradually away, his pulse ceasing to beat five hours before his death. And then he slept out of life on the 3ist December, 1826, in his 71st year."

He left £25,000 of personal property. He left the bulk of it to the Rev. John Cookesley, son of his early patron, whom he also instituted residuary legatee. He also left a sum of money the interest of which was to be distributed annually among the poor of Ashburton.

Finally, one touching trait in the character of Gifford was his exceeding love for children. Looking back at his own desolate, loveless childhood, full of hardship, his heart expanded towards all little ones, and he delighted in attending juvenile parties, and rejoiced at seeing the children frisking about in the happiness of youth. His domestic favourites were his dog and his cat, both of which he dearly loved. He was also most kind and considerate to his domestic servants; and all who knew him well knew that his bark was worse than his bite; he made no answer, did not retaliate when attacked vindictively, insultingly by Hazlitt, and when William Cobbett called him "the dottrel-headed old shuffle-breeches of the Quarterly Review" he cast back no vituperative term in reply.