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Charles James Fox and the Classics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
Extract
Few figures in our political history have aroused such affectionate admiration among posterity as Charles James Fox. Not the least attractive feature of his personality is his love of classical literature. He is the supreme example of the scholarly statesman. Some may suspect that the legendary scholarship of our eighteenth-century statesmen did not extend beyond a few tags from Horace and Virgil, relics of a rigorous public school education. Of Fox at any rate this was not true. A study of his notes on the Classics shows him as a true lover of ancient literature and a fine scholar. It is not inappropriate that his bust should stand next to that of Porson in the Upper School at Eton.
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1940
References
page 82 note 1 All these letters are included in Memorials and Correspondence of Charles
page 83 note 1 Memoirs of Sir Philip Francis, by Parkes, Joseph, ii, p. 448.Google Scholar
page 83 note 2 Plato and Aristophanes were the two celebrated writers of antiquity whom Wakefield could not read through (Correspondence with Fox, p. 175).Google Scholar Gray was one of the few literary men of the eighteenth century who read and appreciated Plato.
page 83 note 3 Oct. 1797 (Memorials, iii, p. 137).Google Scholar
page 83 note 4 To Holland, 28 Sept. 1800 (ibid., p. 182).
page 84 note 1 To Holland, 12 Apr. 1795 (Memorials, iii, p. 102).Google Scholar
page 84 note 2 To Holland, Oct. 1797 (ibid., iii, p. 137).
page 84 note 3 To Trotter, iv (ibid., iv, p. 444).
page 84 note 4 To Wakefield, xi (ibid., iv, p. 318).
page 84 note 5 To Holland, 19 Dec. 1802 (ibid., iii, p. 208).
page 84 note 6 To Trotter, xiv (ibid., iv, p. 461).
page 84 note 7 ‘Far, very far superior to the other Greek tragedians’. Fox to Dr. Parr (Parr's Works, i, p. 616).Google Scholar
page 84 note 8 To Trotter, xiii (Memorials, iv, p. 457).Google Scholar Of Sophocles' plays he liked the Electra best, and found the Oedipus Tyrannus ‘disagreeable’ (ibid.).
page 85 note 1 To Holland, 6 Nov. 1799 (ibid., iii, p. 166).
page 85 note 2 To Holland, 4 Jan. 1800 (ibid., p. 172).
page 85 note 3 Elsewhere he mentions the Hipp. with I.A. as ‘among the best’. Med., Phoen., Heracl., and Alc. are as good; H.F., I.T., Hec., Bacch., and Tro. are all excellent. Then come Ion, Suppl., EL., and Hel. The worst are Or. and Andr. (to Trotter, xiii, ibid., iv, pp. 458–9). Macaulay, on the other hand, considered the Orestes one of the finest plays in the Greek language, and placed it next to the Medea and Bacchae among those of Euripides (Trevelyan, Life of Macaulay, i, p. 482).Google Scholar
page 85 note 4 To Holland, Jan. 1800 (ibid., iii, p. 173).
page 85 note 5 To Trotter, xv (ibid., iv, p. 463).
page 85 note 6 To Wakefield, xxxi (ibid., p. 376).
page 85 note 7 To Holland, Jan. 1800 (ibid., iii, p. 173).
page 85 note 8 To Holland, Jan. 1800 (ibid., p. 175). He has an interesting comparison of Georg. ii. 461 f. with Lucr. ii. 24 f.; he considers Virgil's version not in all respects an improvement (to Holland, 23 July 1801, Memorials, iii, p. 196).
page 86 note 1 To Wakefield, LIII (ibid., iv, p. 415).
page 86 note 2 To Holland, 24 Jan. 1803 (ibid., iii, p. 213).
page 86 note 3 To Trotter, xvi (ibid., iv, p. 467).
page 86 note 4 To Holland, 26 May, 1791 (ibid., ii, p. 365).
page 86 note 5 To Holland, Dec. 1799 (ibid., iii, p. 170).
page 87 note 1 To Wakefield, xxv (ibid., iv, p. 349).