venor’s son. Under the auspices of this nobleman he entered upon London life, and gradually rose to an eminent position among men of letters.
But there is an episode in his life to which he himself makes no allusion in his memoirs. Somewhere about the time when he was able to maintain himself, he married a certain Joanna—her surname is not known—but not at Ashburton. It can hardly be doubted that this was the "little girl down the lane" who had cheered him with her smile and voice in his hours of deepest gloom.
The entry of this marriage has not yet been found, but it will be lighted on some day in the register of one of the Exeter churches. To her he often alluded in his poems, as Anna. In an ode to a tuft of violets we find the following:—
Come then—ere yet the morning ray
Has drunk the dew that gems your crest,
And drawn your balmiest sweets away;
O come and grace my Anna's breast.
O! I should think—that fragrant bed
Might I but hope with you to share—
Years of anxiety repaid
By one short hour of transport there.
To her he appears to have been deeply attached. He moved her to Ashburton, and there visited her when he could escape from his literary labours in London, and there she faded, and was buried on 27 December, 1789. Gifford was stricken by her loss in the most sensitive part of the human heart, for over her grave he poured forth the pathetic lament:—
I wish I was where Anna lies,
For I am sick of lingering here,
And every hour affliction cries,
"Go, and partake her humble bier."
I wish I could! For when she died
I lost my all; and life has proved
Since that sad hour a dreary void,
A waste, unloving and unloved.
