Alford was a talented artist, as his picture-book, "The Riviera" (1870), shows, and he had abundant musical and mechanical talent. Besides editing the works of John Donne, he published several volumes of his own verse, "The School of the Heart" (1835), "The Abbot of Muchelnaye" (1841), "The Greek Testament. The Four Gospels" (1849), and a number of hymns, the best-known of which are "Forward! be our watchword," "Come, ye thankful people, come", and "Ten thousand times ten thousand." He translated the "Odyssey", wrote a well-known manual of idiom, "A Plea for the Queen's English" (1863), and was the first editor of the "Contemporary Review" (1866–1870).