ABSTRACT
This was mainly the work of Octavius Gilchrist (see Nos 22; 18b); but William Gifford (1756–1826), editor of the Quarterly Review, seems to have helped. The Gentleman s Magazine, June 1844, xxi, 578, was quite wrong to suggest that Southey was the author. Gilchrist told Clare on 22 April that he had ‘got very impatient, and fear I have slubbered it. I have not, certainly, instituted the enquiry I proposed to myself, but that may be, perhaps, as well for both of us’ (Eg. 2245, fol. 92). Taylor had little to say about the ‘critique’: ‘I am very indifferent myself to what is said of the “Booksellers metropolitan or provincial”, but I think Henson is placed higher than he deserves’ (6 June, Eg. 2245, fol. 139); to which Clare replied on 10 June, ‘I have seen the critique in the Quarterly & a deal softer it is then I expected as for what he says of booksellers care not I dont’ (LJC, p. 51). The Monthly Magazine, June 1820, xlix, 495, discussing this particular number of the Quarterly, comments: ‘The eighth article respects a volume of pretty descriptive poems, by John Clare, a Northamptonshire peasant; and for once the disadvantages of education are treated with indulgence by the high bred Mr. Gifford. We had supposed that the extraordinary academical pampering which his own genius received in his youth, had rendered him incapable of appreciating the merits of talent struggling with indigence.—We had never presumed to think that he could have any sympathy for such a thing, but we have been mistaken.’ Gifford survived an odd and difficult childhood, before going up to Oxford with help from a subscription; there were, then, reasons for his sympathy towards Clare. E.P., in Gentleman’s Magazine, January, April 1821 (see No. 34) discusses in an article on native genius, Chatterton, Burns, Gifford, Clare, and Kirke White. See Introduction, p. 7.
