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Home  »  library  »  BIOS  »  William Gifford (1756–1826)

C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

William Gifford (1756–1826)

Gifford, William. An English satirical poet, translator, and critic; born at Ashburton, Devonshire, April 1756; died in London, Dec. 31, 1826. His ‘Baviad’ (1791), based on Juvenal’s first satire, and his ‘Mæviad’ (1795) founded upon Horace, both aimed at the Della Crusca poetlings, gave him an authoritative position in the literary world. He edited the Anti-Jacobin for a time; but his position as editor of the Quarterly Review (1809–24), the great Tory organ, made him a power in politics as well as letters. He probably wrote the famous review of Keats’s ‘Endymion,’ inaccurately supposed to have killed that poet.