ABSTRACT
The ‘editor’ of Warreniana, ‘W. G.’, is a thinly disguised version of William Gifford (1756–1826) who edited two of the most notable Tory journals of the Romantic period, The Antijacobin, or Weekly Examiner (1797–8) and the Quarterly Review (1809–24). See the introductory note to the ‘Introduction’ to Warreniana below for a full discussion of Gifford and of Deacon’s attitude towards him. Here we see W. G., ‘devout admirer of church and state’, offering an oleaginous tribute to George IV In his ‘A Letter to William Gifford, Esq’ (1819), Hazlitt sourly characterises Gifford’s relationship with his patrons: ‘To crawl and lick the dust is all they expect of you, and all you can do’ (Hazlitt, vol. IX, p. 15). Similar sentiments inform Deacon’s parodic piece of sycophancy.
