The Greek Revolution, which raged from 1821 to 1829, was another factor in deepening the interest which the English public had in Greece. After the outbreak of the revolution, although the government officially ignored the revolt and added its name to those who refused to admit the Greeks to the Congress of Verona, the people of England announced in no uncertain terms their approval of the Greek cause. The grounds for this approval were two: the Greeks were the people who had in the ages long gone by given priceless literature and art to the world for which the world had done nothing in return; secondly, the Greeks were Christians and were to be encouraged to throw off the yoke of bondage imposed upon them by the Mohammedan Turk. Such sentiments as these are to be found in the magazines of the time and in the various pamphlets which appeared in behalf of the Greeks in the early part of the war. Concretely the interest of the English public was shown by meetings held in various parts of the country, chiefly Edinburgh and London, and in the formation of the London Greek Committee. This committee collected £7,000 by voluntary subscription from the British public, with which to purchase military supplies for the Greeks. At the suggestion of Lord Byron, whom the committee made one of its agents in Greece, the committee assisted in the floating of two Greek loans in England. The battle of Navarino (1827) which, though considered as "untoward" by the government, was a brilliant naval success for the English and French fleets, was heartily welcomed by the English public. And finally at the conclusion of the revolution the English nation became one of the guarantors of the constitutional monarchy established in Greece. Thus through the political events of the decade 1820-1830 Greece was kept in the eye of the British public.
All of these factors, the literary interest in Greece and Greek, the Elgin marbles, and the Greek Revolution, created a desire for things Greek on the part of the English public. Of these three forces the third was of course effective only on the generation then living; but the other two lost none of their power as the century proceeded. In fact the interest in Greek literature as literature, I do not say as a language, was much stronger at the close of the century than at the beginning, largely, I think, because of the efforts of such men as Matthew Arnold, Benjamin Jowett, and Richard Claverhouse Jebb. The work of these men has been ably carried on by Sir Gilbert Murray and J. P. Mahaffy into our own century.