William Mitford

1744-1827

Notes : William Mitford was born in London. After having been educated in Surrey and at Westminster School he matriculated at Queen’s College, Oxford, in 1761, but left without a degree. At Queen’s he met Jeremy Bentham. In the vacations he read some Greek and attended Blackstone’s Vinerian lectures at Oxford with a view to the bar. He became a student of the Middle Temple in 1763, but never practised. On his father’s death in 1761 he succeeded to the property at Exbury. In 1802 he acquired the Reveley estates in Yorkshire, through his mother’s family, but continued till his death to live at Exbury, and devoted himself to the study of Greek. He was verderer of the New Forest in 1778, and was colonel in the South Hampshire militia, in which Gibbon , the historian was a brother-officer. Mitford was M.P. for Newport, Cornwall, from 1785-90, for Beeralston from 1796 to 1806 and for New Romney from 1812 to 1818. In parliament he upheld the militia system, in which he strongly deprecated any innovations. He was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and professor of ancient history at the Royal Academy. He died at his seat, Exbury, on 10 February 1827. Besides his “History of Greece”, Mitford published a treatise on the military force, an ‘Essay on the Harmony of Language’, ‘Considerations on the Corn Laws’, ‘Observations on the history of Christianity’ and a ‘Review of the Early History of the Arabs’. Mitford undertook the “History of Greece” on Gibbon’s suggestion. The first volume appeared in 1784 and vol. 2 in 1790, but the book was not completed until 1810. Other editions appeared (1789-1818; 1795-97; 1818-20; 1822; 1829; 1835). His account remained the standard work on Greek history until the publication of Connop Thirlwall’s “History of Greece” in 1835. It was praised by Brougham in the Edinburgh Review and by Alison (“History of Europe”, 1815-52, chapter 5). Mitford’ History, written during (and against) la Révolution française, made his author associate with anti-Jacobin and antidemocratic tendencies in his treatment of Athens. The work was therefore criticised by Byron (“Don Juan”, canto XII, note) and Macaulay, whereas H. F. Clinton attacked the work’s chronological shortcomings in his “Fasti Hellenici” (1824-51). In the 1829 edition reprinted below, Mitford’s brother, Lord Redesdale, defended the author’s political views. Mitford’s “History” is responsible for stimulating Connop Thirlwall and George Grote to write an antidote. From that point of view, the first lines of George Grote’s “History of Greece” (1845-1856) are significant : “The first idea of this History was conceived many years ago, at a time when ancient Hellas was known to the English public chiefly through the pages of Mitford; and my purpose in writing it was to rectify the erroneous statements as to matter of fact which that history contained, as well as to present the general phaenomena of the Grecian world under what I thought a juster and more comprehensive point of view”.

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