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Richard Shilleto

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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RICHARD SHILLETO (1809-1876), English classical scholar, was born at Ulleskelf in Yorkshire on the 25th of November 1809. He was educated at Repton and Shrewsbury schools, and Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1867 was elected a fellow of Peterhouse. His whole life was spent in Cambridge, where he died on the 24th of September 1876. Shilleto was one of the greatest Greek scholars that England has produced; in addition, he had an intimate acquaintance with the Latin and English languages and literature. He published little, being obliged to devote the best years of his life to private tuition. He was the most famous classical "coach" of his day, and almost all the best men passed through his hands. His edition of the De falsa legatione of Demosthenes will always remain a standard work, but his first two books of Thucydides (an instalment of a long-contemplated edition) hardly came up to expectation. His pamphlet Thucydides or Grote ? excited a considerable amount of feeling. While it undoubtedly damaged Grote's reputation as a scholar, it was felt that it showed a want of appreciation of the special greatness of the historian. Shilleto's powers as a translator from English into Greek (es p ecially prose) and Latin were unrivalled; a selection of his versions was published in 1901.

See B. H. Kennedy in Cambridge Journal of Philology (1877).