[1] By reason of a novel regulation, which enacted that not more than two students educated at the same school should be fellows of the college at one time, he was refused a fellowship at Pembroke, greatly to his disappointment, as he could have held it without taking orders.
[1] From 1806 to 1816 he was tutor successively in the families of Sir George Henry Rose, Robert Smith (whose son, afterwards the Right Hon.
[1] In 1810 he was introduced to William Gifford, and in 1813 he commenced a series of articles in the Quarterly Review on Aristophanes and Athenian manners,[4] the success of which subsequently induced him to undertake his verse translation, which Gordon Goodwin calls "spirited and accurate", of Aristophanes's comedies of the Acharnians, Knights, Clouds, and Wasps (2 vols., 1820–2).
[1] He declined soon afterwards a vacant Greek chair in Scotland, on account of his objection to sign the confession of the Scotch kirk.
[6][1] For the last twenty years of his life Mitchell resided with his relatives in Oxfordshire, occasionally superintending the publication of the Greek authors by the Clarendon Press.
[1] During 1834–8 he edited in separate volumes for John Murray the Acharnians (1835), Wasps (1835), Knights (1836), Clouds (1838), and Frogs (1839) of Aristophanes, with English notes.
[1] In the British Library are Mitchell's copiously annotated copies of Æschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Bekker's edition of the Oratores Attici.