sometimes take up a pen, and after a vain
attempt to write, would throw it down, saying, "No, my work is done!"
Even thinking caused him pain. As his last hour drew near, his mind
began to wander. "These books have driven me mad," he once said, "I must
read my prayers." He passed gradually away, his pulse ceasing to beat
five hours before his death. And then he slept out of life, on December
31, 1826, in his 68th year--a few months before the death of Canning.

Mr. Gifford desired that he should be buried in the ground attached to
Grosvenor Chapel, South Audley Street, where he had interred Annie
Davies, his faithful old housekeeper, but his friends made application
for his interment in Westminster Abbey, which was acceded to, and he was
buried there accordingly on January 8, 1827, immediately under the
monuments of Camden and Garrick. He was much richer at the time of his
death than he was at all aware of, for he was perfectly indifferent
about money. Indeed, he several times returned money to Mr. Murray,
saying that "he had been too liberal." He left L25,000 of personal
property, a considerable part of which he left to the relatives of Mr.
Cookesley, the surgeon of Ashburton, who had been to him so faithful and
self-denying a friend in his early life. To Mr. Murray he left L100 as a
memorial, and also 500 guineas, to enable him to reimburse a military
gentleman, to whom, jointly with Mr. Cookesley, he appears to have been
bound for that sum at a former period.

Gifford has earned, but it is now generally recognised that he has
unjustly earned, the character of a severe, if not a bitter critic.
Possessing an unusually keen discernment of genuine excellence, and a
scathing power of denunciation of what was false or bad in literature,
he formed his judgments in accordance with a very high standard of
merit. Sir Walter Scott said of his "Baviad and Maeviad, that "he
squashed at one blow a set of coxcombs who might have humbugged the
world long enough." His critical temper, however, was in truth
exceptionally equable; regarding it as his duty to encourage all that
was good and elevating, and relentlessly to denounce all that was bad or
tended to lower the tone of literature, he conscientiously acted up to
the standard by which he judged others, and never allowed personal
feeling to intrude upon his official judgments.

It need scarcely be said that he proved himself an excellent editor, and
that he entertained a high ide