thousand times ten thousand." He translated the Odyssey, wrote a well-known manual of idiom, entitled A Plea for the Queen's English (1863), and was the first editor of the Contemporary Review (1866–1870). His chief fame rests on his monumental edition of the New Testament in Greek (8 vols.), on which he worked from 1841 to 1861. In this work he first produced a careful collation of the readings of the chief manuscripts and the researches of the ripest continental scholarship of his day. Philological rather than theological in character, it marked an epochal change from the old homiletic commentary, and though more recent research, patristic and papyral, has largely changed the method of New Testament exegesis, Alford's work is still a quarry where the student can dig with a good deal of profit. See Alford's Law for an example. Alford subsequently published the New Testament for English Readers (4 vols., Rivingtons, 1868). His Life, written by his widow, appeared in 1873 (Rivingtons). References Attribution Bibliography External links Article on one of Alford's Hymns Henry Alford at the Encyclopædia Britannica (1902) 1810 births 1871 deaths 19th-century English theologians Linguists of English English male poets 19th-century English Anglican priests Anglican hymnwriters Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge English hymnwriters Deans of Canterbury Musicians from Kent English male non-fiction writers 19th-century English musicians 19th-century British male writers 19th-century British writers People from Wymeswold Translators of Homer