at its back the national sentiment and the official
power, but far outstripped in literary vigour and brilliancy the
achievements of the other side. The famous collection above referred to,
_The Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin_, which has been again and again
reprinted, shows no signs of losing its attraction,--a thing almost
unparalleled in the case of satirical work nearly a century old. Its
very familiarity makes it unnecessary to dwell much on it, but it is
safe to say that nothing of the kind more brilliant has ever been
written, or is very likely ever to be written, than the parodies of
Southey's Sapphics and "Henry Martin" sonnet, the litany of the
Jacobins, French and English, the "skits" on Payne Knight and Darwin,
_The Rovers_,--mocking the new German sentimentalism and
mediaevalism,--and the stately satire of "The New Morality,"--where,
almost alone, the writers become serious, and reach a height not
attained since Dryden.

Gifford and Mathias differ from the others just mentioned in being less
directly political in writing and inspiration, though Gifford at least
was a strong politician. He was, like Wolcot, a Devonshire man, born at
Ashburton in 1757, and, as his numerous enemies and victims took care
often to remind him, of extremely humble birth and early breeding,
having been a shoemaker's apprentice. Attracting attention as a clever
boy, he was sent to Exeter College and soon attained to influential
patronage. To do him justice, however, he made his reputation by the
work of his own hand,--his satires of _The Baviad_, 1794, and _The
Maeviad_ next year, attacking and pretty nearly extinguishing Merry and
his Della Cruscans, a set of minor bards and mutual admirers who had
infested the magazines and the libraries for some years.[1] The
_Anti-Jacobin_ and the editing of divers English classics put Gifford
still higher; and when the _Quarterly Review_ was established in
opposition to the _Edinburgh_, his appointment (1809) to the editorship,
which he held almost till his death (he gave it up in 1824 and died in
1826), completed his literary position. Gifford is little read nowadays,
and a name which was not a very popular one even on his own side during
his lifetime has, since the triumph of the politics and of some of the
literary styles which he opposed, become almost a byword for savage and
unfair criticism. The penalty of unfairness is usually and rightly paid
in kind, and Gifford has paid it very amply. Th