John Stuart Mill on the Utility of Classical Greece

Abstract

What was the state of classical Greek studies in early Victorian Britain? The anonymous author of a series of Platonic translations-with-commentaries has this to say in the February 1834 issue of the Monthly Repository:Considering the almost boundless reputation of the writings of Plato, not only among scholars, but (upon their authority) among nearly all who have any tincture of letters, it is a remarkable fact that, of the great writers of antiquity, there is scarcely one who, in this country at least, is not merely so little understood, but so little read. Our two great ‘seats of learning’ of which no real lover of learning can ever speak but in terms of indignant disgust, bestow attention upon the various branches of classical acquirement in exactly the reverse order to that which would be observed by persons who valued the ancient authors for what is valuable in them: … with the exception of the two dialogues edited by Dr. Routh, we are aware of nothing to facilitate the study of the most gifted of Greek writers which has ever emanated from either of the two impostor-universities of England; and of die young men who have obtained university honours during the past ten years, we are much misinformed if there be six who had even looked into his writings. There are, probably, in this kingdom, not so many as a hundred persons who ever have read Plato, and not so many as twenty who ever do.’