The nineteenth century, quantitatively at least, is the most important period in the history of Greek translation, for more than half of the total number of translations printed between 1484 and 1916 were published during these years. As the chart indicates the great numerical advance came after 1860, although the preceding sixty years had been far ahead of the previous centuries in the work produced. The reasons suggested for this great advance in the nineteenth century are: first, a new interest in Greece itself; secondly, the rise of classical libraries and the subsequent cheapness of translations; and thirdly a large output, mainly in the latter part of the nineteenth century, of schoolboy helps.
The early part of the nineteenth century was a time of much interest in Greece on the part of the English public. The travels of Edward Dodwell, H. W. Williams, and William Gell, to say nothing of Lord Byron, made the Greece of that day well known in England. Through all this time, from 1784 to 1818, William Mitford's _History of Greece_ was proceeding in leisurely installments. The immediate popularity of the work is but another evidence of the widespread interest in Greece. I need hardly mention the stress which was laid upon the classics in the educational system of the time, for it is a well known fact. The emphasis which was placed upon Greek was at least equal to that upon Latin. The Classical scholars of the period such as C. J. Bloomfield, J. H. Monk, P. P. Dobree, and P. Elmsley spent the major portion of their lives in carrying on the work of Porson and editing Greek texts rather than Latin. The _Reviews_ from time to time published articles on new classical books; and that the emphasis was on Greek rather than Latin is shown by a survey of the classical reviews in the _Edinburgh Review_ between 1802 and 1836: of a total of thirty-nine articles, twenty-nine were on Greek books. All of these forces encouraged a new interest in Greece and Greek literature, an interest which was not so much the purely literary attitude of the century and a half which had just passed, as a general interest on the part of the whole reading public.
Another agency of supreme importance in bringing Greece before the eyes of the English public at this time was the removal of the marbles from the Acropolis by Lord Elgin. These marbles, the last of which arrived in England in 1812, were the center of much discussion in England. One has but to call to mind the caustic remarks by Lord Byron on Elgin in _The Curse of Minerva_ and _Childe Harold_ to realize the intenseness of the opposition to taking away from Greece part of the last vestiges of her ancient glory. The coldness of their reception was finally overcome by Visconti and Canova, who pointed out their historical and artistic value. Finally in 1816, after an extensive investigation of their merits, Parliament appropriated £35,000 for their purchase by the government. From that time until to-day they have been preserved for public view in the British Museum. After the Greek Revolution the service which Lord Elgin had rendered not only to England, but to the world, was recognized; for they alone of all the monuments of Greece escaped the ravages of the years of warfare. The importation of these marbles, then, was another cord which fastened English attention on Greece; for they provoked public discussion of the merits of the action, and for those who had access to London, furnished a physical bond of connection with Greece.