Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/545

Rh Gifford was a staunch friend. He left his house in James Street, Buckingham Gate, to the widow of his old friend Hoppner, the portrait painter. Sir Walter Scott wrote on 17 January, 1827: "I observe in the papers my old friend Gifford's death. He was a man of rare attainments and many excellent qualities. His Juvenal is one of the best versions ever made of a classic author, and his satire of the Baviad and Mœviad squabashed at one blow a set of coxcombs who might have humbugged the world long enough. As a commentator he was capital, could he but have suppressed his rancours against those who had preceded him in the task; but a misconstruction or misinterpretation, nay, the misplacing of a comma, was in Gifford's eyes a crime worthy of the most severe animadversion. The same fault of extreme severity went through his critical labours, and in general he flagellated with so little pity, that people lost their sense of the criminal's guilt, in dislike of the savage pleasure which the executioner seemed to take in inflicting the punishment. This lack of temper probably arose from indifferent health, for he was very valetudinary, and realized two verses, wherein he says Fortune assigned him:—

But he might also justly claim as his gift the moral qualities expressed in the next fine stanza:—