Biographical And Critical Studies

slanders against him, whether woven of errors or of malignant inventions, which had been handed down from one careless writer to another, and particularly all the foul calumnies of his envying and traducing Shakespeare, which the commentators on the latter? Malone, Steevens, and the rest?had fabricated out of the flimsiest and most incongruous yarns of suspicion and prejudice. It was a work well suited to Gifford's mind and temper?keen, vigilant, honest, and somewhat acrid; and he is quite at his best in it, inspired with a generous passion to redeem a great and venerable name from unmerited obloquy. I don't know whether his version of Juvenal still survives; I fancy very few of this generation have read his " Baviad " and " Maeviad," which young Byron termed the first satires of the day, calling aloud, "Why slumbers Gifford?" and, "Arouse thee, Gifford!" but if hisname lives not by itself, it will at any rate go down to remote posterity honourably associated with that of Massinger, associated more honourably yet with that of Ben Jonson. So thoroughly, indeed, has he wrought his labour of love that, so far as I am aware, he has left nothing of any importance, as regards either the life or the text, to be done by those who come after him. About four years ago Hotten published a cheap and handy reprint (why undated?), in three volumes, of Gifford's edition, under the care of that excellent editor, the late Lieut.-Col. Francis Cunningham (son of Allan), who made a f... --This text refers to the Paperback edition.