Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/96

 is now threescore years since Gifford brought out and dedicated to Canning his edition of the works of Ben Jonson, with the text carefully revised and annotated, and elaborate introductory Memoirs. These Memoirs made a new era in the posthumous history of Rare Ben, tearing to shreds and tatters all the 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 "Mæviad," which young Byron termed the first satires of the day, calling aloud, "Why slumbers Gifford?" and, "Arouse thee, Gifford!" but if his