GEORGE

See also:

• GEORGE BURGES (1786-1864)

BURGES (1786-1864)  , English classical scholar, was born in India . He was educated at Charterhouse school and Trinity College, Cambridge, taking his degree in 1807, and obtaining one of the members' prizes both in 18o8 and 1809 . He stayed up at Cambridge and became a most successful " coach." He had a great reputation as a Greek scholar, and was a somewhat acrimonious critic of rival scholars, especially Bishop Blomfield . Subsequently he fell into embarrassed circumstances through injudicious speculation, and in 1841 a civil list pension of £loo per annum was bestowed upon him . He died at Ramsgate, on the filth of January 1864 . Burges was a man of great learning and industry, but too fond of introducing arbitrary emendations into the text of classical authors . His chief works are: Euripides' Troades (1807) and Phoenissae (1809); Aeschylus' Supplices (1821), Eumenides (1822) and Prometheus (1831); Sophocles' Philoctetes (1833); E . F . Poppo's Prolegomena to Thucydides (1837), an abridged translation with critical remarks; Hermesianactis Fragmenta (1839) . He also edited some of the dialogues of Plato with English notes, and translated nearly the whole of that author and the Greek anthology for Bohn's Classical library . He was a frequent contributor to the Classical Journal and other periodicals, and dedicated to Byron a play called The Son of Erin, or, The Cause of the Greeks (1823) .