DEAN GAISFORD.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Is the great Dr. Gaisford,—" I have come all the way from Germany to see the great Dr. Gaisford," said a Pro- fessor, who, after calling in vain at the Deanery, and drawing him to the top of the staircase in Christ Church Library, re- ceived the brusque reply, "And now you have seen him, you can go,"—is that erudite scholar so forgotten that his name is misspelt " Gaiusford," both by a quondam undergraduate of the House, and by a critic of his Reminiscences ? It is perhaps not surprising that Sir John Astley should have let the slip pass in correcting his proof-sheets, but that it should be repeated by the reviewer in a sentence of his own shows how ephemeral reputations are nowadays. Gaisford's " Poeta3 Minores Gimci," and his " Suidae Lexicon," have long since answered to the definition of standard works that they stand on the shelf seldom to come down from it; but one who did good work in his day, and in whose name a prize was founded at Oxford, deserved, one would think, a rather better fate at the hands of orthography within forty years of his death.—I
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