Alfred H. Miles, ed. The Sacred Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.
Critical and Biographical Essay by Alfred H. Miles
Henry Alford (1810–1871)
HENRY ALFORD was born at 25, Alfred Place, Bedford Row, London, on the 10th of October, 1810. He was a son of Rev. Henry Alford, Rector of Aston Sandford. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1829, and graduated in 1832. He was ordained as Curate of Ampton in 1833, and became Fellow of Trinity in 1834. He was Vicar of Wymeswold from 1835 to 1853, Incumbent of Quebec Chapel, London, from 1853 to 1857, and Dean of Canterbury from 1857 until his death, which took place on the 12th of January, 1871. He was Hulsean Lecturer 1841–2. His literary labours were manyfold and incessant, the greatest of his undertakings being his edition of the Greek Testament, a work which took him twenty years to complete. His earlier hymns were published in the Christian Observer and the Christian Guardian (1830), and these were followed by a volume, “Poems and Poetical Fragments” (1833); “The School of the Heart and Other Poems” (1835); “Hymns for the Sundays and Festivals throughout the Year” (1836); “The Abbot of Muchelnaye” (1841); “Psalms and Hymns” (1844); “Poetical Works” (1845); “A Year of Praise” (1867); and “The Lord’s Prayer” (1869); besides which he contributed verse to Macmillan’s Magazine and Good Words.
Dean Alford’s general poems were never popular, nor do they possess the qualities which secure the “audience fit, though few,” which is the consolation of so many who miss wider recognition. His translations show the scholar rather than the poet, and his other poems lack originality of thought and poetic felicity of diction.
