In personal appearance he was not striking. George Ticknor, in his _Life, Letters, and Journals_, says, under 19 June, 1814: “Among other persons I brought letters to Gifford, the satirist, but never saw him till yesterday. Never was I so mistaken in my anticipations. Instead of a tall and handsome man, as I had supposed him from his pictures, a man of severe and bitter remarks in conversation, such as I had good reason to believe him from his books, I found him a short, deformed, and ugly little man, with a large head sunk between his shoulders, and one of his eyes turned outward, but withal one of the best-natured, most open, and well-bred gentlemen I have met.” From the ability and keenness of the _Baviad_ and _Mæviad_, and from a promise made in his edition of the latter to continue his satirical writings, it was hoped that he would do this, but he did not. Byron says:-- “Why slumbers Gifford?” once was asked in vain. Why slumbers Gifford? let us ask again. Are there no follies for his pen to purge? Are there no fools whose backs demand the scourge? Are there no sins for satire’s bard to greet? Stalks not gigantic Vice in every street? Shall peers or princes tread pollution’s path And ’scape alike the law’s and Muse’s wrath? Nor blaze with guilty stare through future time, Eternal beacons of consummate crime? Arouse thee, Gifford! be thy promise claim’d, Make bad men better, or, at least, ashamed. One curious peculiarity Gifford had. He made his old housekeeper sit in his study doing her needlework whilst he was engaged on his literary labours. To the end he maintained a warm friendship with Dr. Ireland, Dean of Westminster, son of a butcher of Ashburton, and a schoolfellow in former days, and when he died he bequeathed to him his library. “The last month of Gifford’s life was but a slow dying”, says Mr. Smiles. “He was sleepless, feverish, oppressed by an extreme difficulty of breathing, which often deprived him of speech; and his sight had failed. Towards the end of his life he would 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 the 31st December, 1826, in his 71st year.” He left £25,000 of personal property. He left the bulk of it to the Rev. John Cookesley, son of his early patron, whom he also instituted residuary legatee. He also left a sum of money the interest of which was to be distributed annually among the poor of Ashburton.