under the tuition of Ruhnken. In the next twenty-eight years, he held professorships at Amsterdam (1771–99), and then returned to Leyden as Ruhnken's successor for seventeen years (1799— 1816). For the last four years of his life, he withdrew to a countryhouse in the neighbourhood. He had lost his sight for some

time before his death in 1820.

His early studies at Göttingen are represented by his Epistola Critica on passages in Julian, Eunapius, and Aristaenetus (1769)'. It was addressed to Ruhnken. Wyttenbach had been reading Xenophon, and was beginning Plato, when a friend, finding that Ruhnken's edition of the Platonic Lexicon of Timaeus had nothing to do with the Platonic dialogue of that name, handed over his copy to Wyttenbach. The latter was soon lost in admiration of its editor, who thus became to him novae veluti vitae auctor2. Heyne, who owed his own professorship at Göttingen to the good-will of Ruhnken, gave Wyttenbach an introduction to the great scholar of Leyden. On entering that university, Wyttenbach worked mainly under Ruhnken, but he also attended, and fully appreciated, the lectures of Valckenaer. The first-fruits of the year at Leyden were his edition of Plutarch, De sera Numinis vindicta (1772). More than twenty years later this led to his undertaking a complete edition of Plutarch's Moralia for the Oxford Press. Six quarto volumes of Greek Text and Latin Translation (1795—1806) were followed by two volumes of Animadversions (1800-21) and completed by an Index in two volumes of more than 1700 pages, published under Gaisford's superintendence in 1830. The successive instalments of 'copy' were sent to the Press through the British Minister at the Hague; the first arrived safely in 1794; in 1798 (when Holland was at war with England) the next was despatched in a box protected with pitch from the perils of the sea, and was mislaid at the Hague for two years and a half; during all this time the editor was anxiously uncertain as to its fate3.

On the death of Ruhnken, Wyttenbach became the most influential scholar in the Netherlands. His influence was maintained and extended by the articles which he wrote for two

1 This Epistola, with notes, on Julian's Eulogy of Constantius, was reprinted by G. H. Schaefer (1802).

2 Wyttenbach, Vita R. 148.

3 Mahne's Wyttenbach, 142-52.

Classical Reviews in succession:-(1) the Bibliotheca Critica (1777-1809), to which he was the principal contributor; and (2) the Philomathia (1809-17), written entirely by himself. contributions were, however, not unfrequently distinguished more for the elegance of their Latinity than for precise and thorough treatment of the work reviewed. Both of these periodicals give abundant proof of the friendly relations between scholars in the Netherlands and in England'.

While Wyttenbach was still at Amsterdam, he had proved his aptitude for attracting promising students, such as Hieronymus de Bosch (1740-1811), the editor of the Greek Anthology, Nieuwland (1764-94), the author of a treatise on Musonius Rufus, and D. J. van Lennep (1774-1853), the editor of Hesiod, who, together with de Bosch, followed him to Leyden. At Leyden his influence was still greater. His pupils there included Alexander Basse (d. 1844), and Philip Willem van Heusde (1778-1839). All of them were formed on his own model, and, in their devotion to Greek Philosophy and to Cicero, became 'miniature Wyttenbachs'. It was an exception when their work, as in the case of van Heusde's Specimen Criticum in Platonem, was concerned with emendation and interpretation. Wyttenbach himself, who began with an unbounded admiration for the critical works of Ruhnken and Valckenaer, an admiration expressed in the Epistola Critica of his time at Göttingen, found himself intellectually further and further removed from them, the nearer he came under their immediate and personal influence. Thus, his edition of the Phaedo (1810), which has been far too highly praised, reflects the influence of Heyne rather than that of Ruhnken. The grammatical and critical method here gives place to an aesthetic type of commentary, full of charm and elegance, but only too apt to ignore real difficulties, and not always distinguished by clearness and simplicity of expression. His monographs on leading representatives of Greek literature are far less elaborate in their method, far less rich in their results, than the works of Ruhnken and Valckenaer on similar subjects. Even his conclusive proof of the spuriousness of the 'Plutarchic' treatise, De Educatione Puerorum,

1 Chr. Wordsworth, Scholae Academicae, 93-6.

is inferior to Valckenaer's masterly exposure of the impostor Aristobulus.

But his departure from Ruhnken's critical method was less pronounced than his breach with the old Latin traditions of the Netherlands. The unanimous voice of his scholarly contemporaries assures us that he had little taste for modern Latin poetry, and, although this is not so grave a crime as it might have seemed in the eyes of the pupils of Burman II and of Schrader, Lucian Müller demurs to the dictum of Peerlkamp, that Wyttenbach is entitled to the gratitude of the scholars of the Netherlands for 'suppressing the perverse study of Latin versification'. Such gratitude would only be in place, if he had transformed this 'perverse study' into one that was sane and rational. This he was neither able nor willing to do, and the 'suppression' of Latin verse in the Netherlands has been accompanied by a decline in Latin scholarship. He was more interested in the Greek poets, but, strange to say, he does not apply that interest to the numerous poetic passages imbedded in the prose of Plutarch. In fact, he does not always detect their existence. Nevertheless, a permanent value attaches to his edition of the Moralia, and to the efforts aroused by himself and his pupils for the understanding of the old philosophy, especially that of Plato and the Platonists. also helped to oppose the introduction of the modern Kantian philosophy into Holland'. The highest praise must be assigned to his Life of Ruhnken, a work of absorbing interest to his scholarly contemporaries, which still retains its importance as a comprehensive picture of the Scholarship of the Netherlands, and not the Netherlands alone, in the age of Ruhnken. Like Ruhnken himself, he represents the close of the old order; he had no sympathy with the new direction that was being given to classical studies by Wolf".

1 L. Müller, 91–96.

He

2 On Wyttenbach, cp. Mahne's Vita, Ghent, 1823; ed. Friedemann (with Epp. ineditae), Braunschweig, 1825; Selectae Epp., ed. Kraft (Altona, 1834); Opuscula (Leyden, 1821); Epp. sex ineditae (Marburg, 1839); also Pattison's Casaubon, 423, 439, 4492; Praecepta philosophiae logicae (Halle, 1820).

S. II.

30

Thus far we have surveyed the progress of scholarship during the eighteenth century in Italy and France, in England and the Netherlands. We have seen that, in the two Latin nations, the study of Latin continued to flourish by the side of the study of archaeology. In Italy, Greek was in a subordinate position, Corsini's Fasti Attici' being the only important product of Greek learning, as contrasted with numerous publications connected with the study of Latin, culminating in the great lexicon of Forcellini2. In France, the study of Greek was well represented, in the early part of the century, by Montfaucon's Palaeographia Graeca3, and, towards its close, by Villoison's Venetian Scholia1—the armoury from which Wolf drew some of the weapons for his famous Prolegomena. In England, Bentley's immortal Dissertation, originally written to correct an indiscriminate admiration for all the reputed works of the 'ancients', placed the sequence of ancient literature in a proper historical perspective; it also set an effective example of critical method, while it incidentally proved that, for the discussion of a complicated problem in Greek literature, the artificial Latin hitherto in fashion was a less adequate medium than the vigorous use of the mother-tongue. Bentley's influence as a Greek scholar had also a direct effect on Holland, and, through Holland, on Germany. It was owing to Bentley's encouragement that Hemsterhuys resolved on mastering the defects in his knowledge of Greek?, and thus ultimately achieved so great a reputation that Ruhnken left Germany to learn Greek at Leyden, just as, in the next generation, Wyttenbach went to learn Greek from Ruhnken. Lastly, we may recall the influence exerted in Germany by Robert Wood's Essay10, which inspired Heyne with a new interest in Homer, and supplied Wolf with part of the materials for his Prolegomena. Our survey of the eighteenth century in Germany is reserved for the first two chapters in the next volume.

6 Cp. Wilamowitz, in Lexis, Die Reform des höheren Schulwesens (1902),