at my expenses, but I owe in some measure the extension of my feeble life to her care through a long succession of years, and I would cheerfully divide my last farthing with her."
When the scheme was first started to issue the Quarterly Review, to counteract the influence of the Edinburgh Review, Gifford was at once proposed as editor. Sir Walter Scott, 25 October, 1808, wrote of the selection: "Gifford will be admirable at service, but will require, or I mistake him much, both a spur and a bridle—a spur on account of habits of literary indolence, induced by weak health, and a bridle because, having renounced in some degree general society, he cannot be supposed to have the habitual and distinctive feeling enabling him to judge at once and decidedly on the mode of letting his shafts fly down the breeze of popular opinion. But he has worth, wit, learning, and extensive information."
From this time the influence and celebrity of Gifford may be deemed established; nor were his services as a party man forgotten by those who could reward him, as he possessed two sinecures, the controllership of the lottery, at a salary of £600 per annum, and paymastership of the band of gentlemen pensioners, at £300 per annum. As editor of the Quarterly, he received a salary of £900 per annum, and also a pension of £400 from his former pupil, now Earl Grosvenor. He bitterly lamented, long ere this, that before the means of helping his little brother, nursed in the almshouse at Ashburton, was in his power, that little brother had died.
He was alone in the world, and his early trials, his loss of the only beings whom he had loved, soured his temper, and made him savage and virulent in his treatment of such as differed from him. One great defect he showed as editor. He would not consider a work to
