"It is on all hands conceded, that the success which attended the 'Quarterly' from the outset was due, in no small degree, to the ability and tact with which Gifford discharged his editorial duties."--_Encyclopædia Britannica._ "I am not more certain of many conjectures than I am that he never propagated a dishonest opinion, nor did a dishonest act."--_Writer in the Literary Gazette._ WILLIAM GIFFORD. The field of literature seems always to have had a special charm for shoemakers. If the reader will glance for a moment at the list of names given at the end of this book, this fact will be at once apparent. Half, or more than half, the names given in that list are in some way or other connected with literature. The connection is but slight in many instances, perhaps, and the reputation it conferred only local and temporary. Few of our shoemakers, even though we have thought well to style them "illustrious," can be said to have made a great and lasting name in the world of letters; and none of them it must be confessed have attained to first rank as prose or poetical writers. But there are worthies in our list, associated alike with the humble craft of shoemaking and the higher walks of literature, whose names the world will not willingly let die, and we venture to think that the subject of this sketch is one of the number. William Gifford was the first editor of the _London Quarterly Review_. The high and influential position held by this journal was mainly due in the first instance to Gifford's talent and excellent management. The _London Quarterly_ was started in opposition to the famous _Edinburgh Quarterly_; George Canning, the celebrated statesman, and Sir Walter Scott, the great novelist, being the prime movers and early patrons of the enterprise, for the _Edinburgh_, under the clever management of Jeffrey, and supported by such writers as Sydney Smith and Brougham, was then too liberal in its tone to suit the taste of the brilliant Foreign Secretary and his Tory friends. It was no slight testimony to the abilities of the man who was chosen as the first editor of the new _Quarterly_ that his election should have been cordially approved by the first of Scottish novelists, and one of the most influential of English statesmen.