self, became so much interested in his favour, that he determined to rescue him from his obscurity. "The plan," says Gifford, "that occured to him was naturally that which had so often suggested itself to me. There were, indeed, several obstacles to be overcome. My hand-writing was bad, and my language very incorrect; but nothing could slacken the zeal of this excellent man. He procured a few of my poor attempts at rhyme, dispersed them amongst his friends and acquaintance, and, when my name was become somewhat familiar to them, set on foot a subscription for my relief. I still preserve the original paper; its title was not very magnificent, though it exceeded the most sanguine wishes of my heart. It ran thus: A subscription for purchasing the remainder of the time of William Gifford, and for enabling him to improve himself in writing and English grammar.' Few contributed more than five shillings, and none went beyond ten and sixpence,-enough, however, was collected to free me from my apprenticeship, and maintain me for a few months, during which, I assiduously attended the Rev Thomas Smerdon."

The rest of the story may be very compendiously told. The difficulties of the poor scholar were now over, for his patrons were so much pleased with the progress he made during this short period, that, upon its expiration, they renewed their bounty, and maintained him at school for another year. "Such liberality," he remarks, "was not lost upon me; I grew anxious to make the best return in my power, and I redoubled my diligence. Now that I am sunk into indolence, I look back with some degree of scepticism to the exertions of that period." In two years and two months from what he calls the day of his emanci

* "The sum my master received was six pounds.”

pation, he was pronounced by his master to be fit for the University; and a small office having been obtained for him by Mr Cookesley's exertions at Oxford, he was entered of Exeter College, that gentleman undertaking to provide the additional means necessary to enable him to live till he should take his degree. Mr Gifford's first patron died before his protegé had time to fulfil the good man's fond anticipations of his future celebrity; but he afterwards found, in Lord Grosvenor, another much more able, though it was impossible that any other could have shewn more zeal, to advance his interests. A long and prosperous life, during which he acquired a distinguished name in the literary world, was the ample compensation for the humiliation and hardships of his youth. He was the Editor, for many years, of the Quarterly Review,' which was placed under his management at its commencement in 1809; and which attained the most distinguished success, in a great degree through his judicious and careful attention to his conduct. The narrative from which we have extracted the preceding pages, and which is so interestingly written that we have generally preferred retaining the original words in our abridgement, is prefixed to his English version of Juvenal, the first edition of which appeared in 1802. Mr Gifford died in London on the 31st of December 1826, in the seventy-first year of his age. It is a beautiful circumstance in his history, and one which shews how a generous act sometimes receives even a worldly reward, that he left the bulk of his fortune to the son of his first most kind and disinterested patron, Mr Cookesley.

Similar in some respects to Gifford's early history, is that of a very inferior man, the late THOMAS HOLCROFT, the author of 'Hugh Trevor,' and many other well known productions in light litera

ture. Holcroft has also left us part of a memoir of his own life, the composition of which, however, he commenced too late to live to finish. "How much he had it at heart," says the editor of the manuscript, which was given to the world some years after the death of the author, " may, however, be inferred from the extraordinary pains he then took to make some progress in it. He told his physicians that he did not care what severity of treatment he was subjected to, provided he could live six months longer to complete what he had begun. By dictating a word at a time, he succeeded in bringing it down to his fifteenth year. When the clearness, minuteness, and vividness of what he thus wrote, are compared with the feeble, half-convulsed state in which it was written, it will be difficult to bring a stronger instance of the exertion of resolution and firmness of mind under such circumstances."

Holcroft was born in London in the year 1745, at which time his father wrought as a shoemaker, and his mother dealt in greens and oysters. His father, who seems to have been a person of unsettled habits, though a well-meaning and upright man, knew very little of his business, to which he had not been regularly bred, and, in spite of the exertions both of himself and his wife, his affairs did not prosper. When young Holcroft was about six years old, the family were suddenly removed from London to a place in Berkshire beyond Ascot Heath, where they remained for about twelve months. Thomas had as yet only been for a short time at a school where children were sent rather to keep them out of harm's way than to learn anything, and to which he used to be carried by an apprentice of his father's. This lad afterwards gained his warmest gratitude by making him a present of the first two books he ever possessed, the one being the History of Parismus and Parismenes,

already mentioned as one of Gifford's early literary companions, and the other the Seven Champions of Christendom. It was while they resided in Berkshire that his father began teaching him to read. “The task," says he, " at first I found difficult, till the idea one day suddenly seized me, of catching all the sounds I had been taught from the arrangement of the letters; and my joy at this amazing discovery was so great, that the recollection of it has never been effaced. After that my progress was so rapid that it astonished my father. He boasted of me to every body; and that I might lose no time, the task he set me was eleven chapters a day in the Old Testament. I might, indeed, have deceived my father by skipping some of the chapters, but a dawning regard for truth, aided by the love I had of reading, and the wonderful histories I sometimes found in the Sacred Writings, generally induced me to go through the whole of my task. One day as I was sitting at the gate with my Bible in my hand, a neighbouring farmer, coming to see my father, asked me if I could read the Bible already. I answered, yes; and he desired me to let him hear me. I began at the place where the book was open, read fluently, and afterwards told him, that, if he pleased, he should hear the tenth chapter of Nehemiah. At this he seemed still more amazed, and wishing to be convinced, bade me read. After listening till he found I could really pronounce the uncouth Hebrew names so much better, and more easily, than he supposed to be within the power of so young a child, he patted my head, gave me a penny, and said I was an uncommon boy. It would be hard to say whether his praise or his gift was most flattering to me. Soon after, my father's apprentice, the kind-hearted Dick, who came backward and forward to my father on his affairs, brought me the two delightful histories I have above mentioned, which were

among those then called Chapman's Books. It was scarcely possible for anything to have been more grateful to me than this present. Parismus and Parismenes, with all the adventures detailed in the Seven Champions of Christendom, were soon as familiar to me as my catechism, or the daily prayers I repeated kneeling before my father."

On leaving their house in Berkshire, the family were obliged to adopt a wandering life, the mother turning pedlar, and hawking her wares through the outskirts and neighbourhood of London, while her son trotted after her, and the father, after a vain attempt to obtain some regular employment, in a short time joining the party, who now extended their peregrinations to remote parts of the country. While leading this life, they endured the greatest hardships; and upon one occasion were so severely pressed, that Thomas was sent to beg from house to house in a village where they happened to be. At length the father managed to buy two or three asses, which he loaded with hampers of apples and pears, and drove about through the country. But this apparent improvement in their circumstances afforded no alleviation to the sufferings of the poor boy. "The bad nourishment I met with," says he; "the cold and wretched manner in which I was clothed; and the excessive weariness I endured in following these animals day after day, and being obliged to drive creatures perhaps still more weary than myself, were miseries much too great, and loaded my little heart with sorrows far too pungent ever to be forgotten. Bye roads and high roads were alike to be traversed, but the former far the oftenest, for they were then almost innumerable, and the state of them in winter would scarcely at present be believed." In one instance, he mentions that he travelled on foot thirty miles in one day; and he was at this time only a child 35

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