MITFORD, William, author of a History of Greece, was the eldest son of John Mitford of Exbury in Hampshire, and was born in London in 1744. He studied at Queen's College, Oxford; but he showed no taste for any branch of knowledge except Greek, and left the university without a degree. His legal studies at the Middle Temple were becoming equally unsatisfactory, when the death of his father, in 1761, transferred the family estate into his hands, and rendered it no longer necessary that he should adopt a profession. He therefore fixed his residence at his country seat, and turned his attention from the hard details of law to his favourite Greek authors. In 1769 Mitford, entering as captain into the South Hampshire Militia, became acquainted with Gibbon, who was major in the same corps. His intercourse with the future historian, whose brain was then teeming with literary projects, gave form, and perhaps origin, to his purpose of writing a history of Greece. The first volume of this great work appeared in 1784, and the four remaining volumes followed in 1790, 1797, 1808, and 1818, respectively. The increasing infirmities of age prevented the historian from carrying his narration of events beyond the death of Alexander the Great. Meanwhile he had successively represented in Parliament Newport in Cornwall, Beccles, and New Romney. He had also been appointed professor of ancient history in the Royal Academy. His death took place at his hereditary seat in 1827. An edition of the History of Greece, with a Life of the author by his brother, Lord Redesdale, was published in 10 vols. 8vo, London, 1829. The other works of Mitford are,—An Inquiry into the Principles of Harmony in Languages, and of the Mechanism of Verse, Modern and Ancient, 8vo, London, 1774; and A Treatise on the Military Force, and particularly the Militia of this Kingdom, 8vo.
Previous to the publication of the great historical works of Grote and Thirlwall, Mitford was reckoned the highest authority on Grecian history. More intimate with the original narratives of Thucydides, Xenophon, and Arrian, than any of his predecessors, he discovered much that was new concerning the events and political questions of ancient Greece. Some of his most manifest faults are a cum-
brous style, a deficiency in reflective power, and an occasional dullness in narration. Worse than all these, however, is that obstinate prejudice which invariably leads him to advocate tyranny and to misrepresent democracy.