deposited in Westminster Abbey. Its interment took place on the 8th of January 1827, immediately below the monuments of Camden and Garrick. The first mourning coach contained Dr. Ireland, Dean of Westminster, General Grosvenor, Mr. Cookesley, senior, and Mr. Cookesley, jun.; the second, Mr. Croker, Mr. Barrow, Mr. Hay, and Mr. Backhouse: the third, Mr. Chantrey (the sculptor), Mr. Bedford, Mr. Lockhart, and Mr. Sergeant Rough; the fourth, Mr. Palgrave, Mr. Hoppner, Mr. Jacob, and Mr. Taylor (the late proprietor of the Sun newspaper); the fifth and last, Mr. Bandinell, Dr. Thompson, Mr. Parsloe, Mr. Cooper, and Mr. Murray, the bookseller. The deceased gentleman's carriage, with those of the youth, my pride and consolation in old age!"-Mr. Gifford had before alluded to this faithful friendship, in the following beautiful lines of the " Baviad: " "Sure, if our fates hang on some hidden power, Thou know'st how soon we felt this influence bland, Of the Ligurian, stern though beardless sage! " Dean of Westminster, Lord Grosvenor, Mr. Parsloe, Mr. Jacob, Lord Belgrave, Mr. Backhouse, Dr. Thompson, and Mr. Croker, closed the pro cession. The probate of Mr. Gifford's will was taken out under £.25,000 personal property. He left the bulk of his fortune to the Rev. Mr. Cookesley, who was likewise appointed his residuary legatee. He left his house in James-street, for the remainder of the term, nearly thirty years, to Mrs. Hoppner, widow of the eminent portrait-painter, and legacies of a few hundreds to her children. He bequeathed a sum of money, the interest of which is to be distributed annually among the poor of Ashburton; and to Exeter-college another sum, the foundation of two scholarships. Three thousand pounds were left to the relatives of his beloved maid-servant. To Mr. Heber he bequeathed his edition of Maittaire's Classics, and any other books Mr. Heber might choose to select. To Mr. Murray, the bookseller, he left £.100 as a memorial; likewise five hundred guineas, to enable him to reimburse a military gentleman, to whom he appears to have become jointly bound for the advance of that sum for Mr. Cookesley, at a former period. To his executor, Dr. Ireland, he gave fifty guineas for a ring, and any of his books the Dean might select. He requested his executor to destroy all confidential papers, especially those relating to the Review, so that the illustrated Quarterly, in which the names of the authors, and the prices paid for each article, are said to have been inserted, will never see the light. There were also other legacies to individuals; and various codicils. The whole was in the hand-writing of Mr Gifford. 1. MR. GIFFORD'S AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR *. "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 Halsworthy, 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 at Ashburton) loved to repeat to me, when I first grew into notice, that he had frequently hunted with his hounds. "My grandfather was on ill terms with him; I believe not without sufficient reason, for he was extravagant and dissipated. My father never mentioned his name, but my mother would sometimes tell me that he had ruined the family. That he spent much I know; but I am inclined to think that his undutiful conduct occasioned my great-grandfather to bequeath a part of his property from him. "My father, I fear, revenged, in some measure, the cause of my great-grandfather. He was, as I have heard my mother say, 'a very wild young man, who could be kept to nothing.' He was sent to the grammar-school at Exeter, from which he made his escape, and entered on board a man of war. He was soon reclaimed from his situation by my grandfather, and left his school a second time to wander in some vagabond society t. He * Of the powerful impression which this narrative produced, at the time of its publication, on every candid and honourable mind, the following just and animated passages in a critique on Mr. Gifford's Translation of Juvenal, which appeared in the Monthly Review in 1803, will furnish a sufficient proof: "Mr. Gifford has introduced this volume by a memoir of himself, which is written with so much ability and unaffected modesty, with so much ingenuousness and manly feeling, that it must secure to bim universal regard and esteem. He may say with the admired author whom he translates, Stemmata quid faciunt? for he possesses what ancestry cannot bequeath, great talents and a noble mind; and while, without reserve, he discloses the obscurity of his origin, his struggles with poverty in the lowest situations, and his progress in mental improvement under the most sickening discouragements, he increases our respect for him, and prepares us to rejoice in those propitious circumstances which favoured the expansion of his mind, fostered his love of science, and raised him to a state of independence. Of such a life as that of Mr. Gifford, no man, who thinks and feels like a man, will be ashamed." + "I have, however, some faint notion of hearing my mother say, that he, or his father, had been a china-merchant in London. By china-merchant, I always understood, and so perhaps did she, a dealer in china ware. "He had gone with Bamfylde Moore Carew, then an old man." was now probably given up, for he was, on his return from this notable adventure, reduced to article himself to a plumber and glazier, with whom he luckily staid long enough to learn the business. I suppose his father was now dead, for he became possessed of two small estates, married my mother* (the daughter of a carpenter at Ashburton), and thought himself rich enough to set up for himself, which he did with some credit at South Molton. Why he chose to fix there I never inquired; but I learned from my mother that, after a residence of four or five years, he was again thoughtless enough to engage in a dangerous frolic, which drove him once more to sea. This was an attempt to excite a riot in a Methodist chapel; for which his companions were prosecuted, and he fled, as I have mentioned. "My father was a good seaman, and was soon made second in command in the Lyon, a large armed transport in the service of government; while my mother (then with child of me) returned to her native place, Ashburton, where I was born in April 1757. "The resources of my mother were very scanty. They arose from the rent of three or four small fields, which yet remained unsold. With these, however, she did what she could for me; and as soon as I was old enough to be trusted out of her sight, sent me to a schoolmistress of the name of Parret, from whom I learned in due time to read. I cannot boast much of my acquisitions at this school, they consisted merely of the contents of the Child's Spelling Book ;' but from my mother, who had stored up the literature of a country town, which about half a century ago amounted to little more than what was disseminated by itinerant ballad-singers, or rather readers, I had acquired much curious knowledge of Catskin, and the Golden Bull, and the Bloody Gardener, and many other histories equally instructive and amusing. 'My father returned from sea in 1764. He had been at the siege of Havannah; and though he received more than a hundred pounds for prize-money, and his wages were considerable, yet, as he had not acquired any strict habits of economy, he brought home but a trifling sum. The little property yet left was therefore turned into money; a trifle more was got by agreeing to renounce all future pretensions to an estate at Totness †, and with this my father set up a second time as a glazier and house-painter. I was now about eight years old, and was put to the free-school (kept by Hugh Smerdon) to learn to * "Her maiden name was Elizabeth Cain. My father's Christian name was Edward." "This was a lot of small houses, which had been thoughtlessly suffered to fall to decay, and of which the rents had been so long unclaimed, that they could not now be recovered, unless by an expensive litigation." read, and write, and cypher. Here I continued about three years, making a most wretched progress, when my father fell sick and died. He had not acquired wisdom from his misfortunes, but continued wasting his time in unprofitable pursuits, to the great detriment of his business. He loved drink for the sake of society, and to this love he fell a martyr; dying of a decayed and ruined constitution before he was forty. The town's people thought him a shrewd and sensible man, and regretted his death. As for me, I never greatly loved him; I had not grown up with him; and he was too prone to repulse my little advances to familiarity with coldness and anger. He had certainly some reason to be displeased with me, for I learned little at school, and nothing at home, though he would now and then attempt to give me some insight into the business. As impressions of any kind are not very strong at the age of eleven or twelve, I did not long feel his loss; nor was it a subject of much sorrow to me that my mother was doubtful of her ability to continue me at school, though I had by this time acquired a love for reading. "I never knew in what circumstances my mother was left; most probably they were inadequate to her support without some kind of exertion, especially as she was now burdened with a second child, about six or eight months old. Unfortunately she determined to prosecute my father's business; for which purpose she engaged a couple of journeymen, who finding her ignorant of every part of it, wasted her property and embezzled her money. What the consequence of this double fraud would have been there was no opportunity of knowing, as in somewhat less than a twelvemonth my poor mother followed my father to the grave. She was an excellent woman, bore my father's infirmities with patience and good humour, loved her children dearly, and died at last exhausted with anxiety and grief, more on their account than on her own. It "I was not quite thirteen when this happened; my little brother was hardly two; and we had not a relation nor a friend in the world. Every thing that was left was seized by a person of the name of C-, for money advanced to my mother may be supposed that I could not dispute the justice of his claims, and as no one else interfered, he was suffered to do as he liked. My little brother was sent to the alms-house, whither his nurse followed him out of pure affection, and I was taken to the house of the person I have just mentioned, who was also my godfather. Respect for the opinion of the town (which, whether correct or not, was, that he had repaid himself by the sale of my mother's effects,) induced him to send me again to school, where I was more diligent than before, and more successful. I grew fond of arithmetic, and my master began to distinguish me; but these golden days were over in less than three inonths. C sickened at the expense; and as the people were now in |