As a commentator he was capital, could he but have suppressed his rancour 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 realised two verses, wherein he says fortune assigned him—­

“----- One eye not over good,
Two sides that to their cost have stood
A ten years’ hectic cough,
Aches, stitches, all the various ills
That swell the dev’lish doctor’s bills,
And sweep poor mortals off.”

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

“------A soul
That spurns the crowd’s malign control,
A firm contempt of wrong: 
Spirits above afflictions’ power,
And skill to soothe the lingering hour
With no inglorious song."[443]

January 18.—­To go on with my subject—­Gifford was a little man, dumpled up together, and so ill-made as to seem almost deformed, but with a singular expression of talent in his countenance.  Though so little of an athlete, he nevertheless beat off Dr. Wolcot, when that celebrated person, the most unsparing calumniator of his time, chose to be offended with Gifford for satirising him in his turn.  Peter Pindar made a most vehement attack, but Gifford had the best of the affray, and remained, I think, in triumphant possession of the field of action, and of the assailant’s cane.  Gifford had one singular custom.  He used always to have a duenna of a housekeeper to sit in his study with him while he wrote.  This female companion died when I was in London, and his distress was extreme.  I afterwards heard he got her place supplied.  I believe there was no scandal in all this.[444]

This is another vile day of darkness and rain, with a heavy yellow mist that might become Charing Cross—­one of the benefits of our extended city; for that in our atmosphere was unknown till the extent of the buildings below Queen Street.  M’Culloch of Ardwell called.

Wrought chiefly on a critique of Mrs. Charlotte Smith’s novels,[445] and proofs.

January 19.—­Uncle Adam,[446] vide Inheritance, who retired last year from an official situation at the age of eighty-four, although subject to fits of giddiness, and although carefully watched by his accomplished daughter, is still in the habit of walking by himself if he can by possibility make an escape.  The other day, in one of these excursions, he fell against a lamp-post, cut himself much, bled a good deal, and was carried home by two gentlemen.  What said old Rugged-and-Tough?  Why, that his fall against the post was the luckiest thing could have befallen him, for the bleeding was exactly the remedy for his disorder.