Scriptis Longini (1776), which Wyttenbach does not hesitate to pronounce 'immortal'. 'Hic ejus libellus apud intelligentissimos judices, triplicis artis, Historiae, Criticae, Eloquentiae, palmam tulit". Shortly afterwards, C. F. Matthaei sent him from Moscow a transcript of the lately discovered Homeric Hymns to Dionysus and Demeter, and, within the space of two years, two editions of the same were published by Ruhnken (1780-2). In 1784 he began his complete edition of Muretus, whom he regarded as an admirable model of modern Latin. In the same year he had a welcome visit from Thomas Burgess, the editor of five Greek plays and the future bishop of Salisbury, and, two years later, he saw much of Spalding, the future editor of Quintilian. Among the latest works on which he was engaged was an edition of certain scholia on Plato, with a revision of the Latin lexicon of Scheller. In 1795 F. A. Wolf's 'Prolegomena to Homer' was dedicated Davidi Ruhnkenio Principi Criticorum. For the author he had the highest esteem, and it was with a peculiar pleasure that he read this work, even when he differed from its conclusions. Three years afterwards, while his mind was wandering during an illness that proved fatal, he was heard to murmur broken snatches of Greek and Latin, till, as he slumbered, 'at last Sleep laid him with her brother, Death'. Thus, in the land of his adoption, the German student who had left his home to learn Greek at Leyden, passed away at the time when a new age of criticism was beginning to dawn in the land of his fathers. Ruhnken's portrait was drawn on an ample scale by his favourite pupil, Wyttenbach, whose Life of his master is practically a survey of the History of Scholarship during this age. Ruhnken himself is there described as endowed with every grace of mind and body, a well-built frame, a dignified bearing, a cheerful countenance, skill in music and drawing, in riding and leaping, and in the pursuits of the chase". 1 Vita, 169 f. 2 P. 431 supra. Vita (L. B. 1799; ed. Bergman, ib. 1824; ed. Frotscher, Friberg, 1846). Opuscula, 2 vols, ed. 2 (1823); Orationes, Dissertationes et Epistolae, W. Friedemann, Bruns., 1828; Epp. ad Wyttenbach., ed. Mahne (Altona, 1834); Select Epp. etc. in H. H. Wolf's Eclogae Latinae, 140—191 (1885). Cp. L. Müller, 84-88, 101 f; and H. Petrich, in Z. f. Gymn. xxxiv (1880) 81–111. Before turning to Wyttenbach, the pupil and biographer and successor of Ruhnken, we may briefly notice a few minor scholars, who, in the date of their birth, fall between the two great scholars already mentioned. Johann Pierson (1731—1759), a pupil of Valckenaer and Schrader at Franeker, and of Hemsterhuys at Leyden (1751), and for four Pierson brief years Rector of the school at Leeuwarden (1755-9), published his Verisimilia in 1752, and his edition of the lexicon of Moeris four years later. Gisbert Koen (1736—1767), a native of Breda, studied at Franeker and Leyden. After holding several head-masterships, he became professor of Greek at Franeker in the last year of his life. Koen It was during the same year that his edition of Gregorius Corinthius was published at Leyden. Laurens van Santen of Amsterdam (1746—1798) studied under Burman II at Leyden, where he became Curator of the university. Santen He completed Burman's edition of Propertius and edited Callimachus' Hymn to Apollo, with Valckenaer's notes. His own edition of Terentianus Maurus was completed by J. D. van Lennep (1825). His collections for an edition of Catullus are preserved in the Royal Library at Berlin. He was in good repute as a Latin poet'. Jean Luzac (1746—1807), the pupil and the son-in-law of Valckenaer, studied law at Leyden, practised as a barrister at the Hague, and succeeded Valckenaer as professor of Greek from 1785 Luzac to 1796, and again from 1802 to 1807. In this last year, he was one of the many victims of a fatal explosion of a cargo of gunpowder on board a barge in Leyden2. Besides editing Valckenaer's Fragments of Callimachus (1799) and his Diatribe on Aristobulus (1806), he was prompted doubtless by his father-in-law's edition of the Hippolytus to include many criticisms on that play in his Exercitationes Academicae (1792–3). He also contributed to his pupil Janus Otto Sluiter's Lectiones Andocideae (1804). He appears in the light of a lawyer rather than a scholar in his Lectiones Atticae, edited after his death by Sluiter, a professor of Greek and Roman literature at Deventer, who died in 1815. In the first of the two periods of his professorship, Luzac was overshadowed by Ruhnken, and in the second by Wyttenbach'. Wyttenbach Daniel Wyttenbach (1746-1820), who was born at Bern, was educated at Marburg, and studied for a time at the universities of Marburg and Göttingen. Just as Ruhnken left Wittenberg and neglected Göttingen, to become a pupil of Hemsterhuys at Leyden, so Wyttenbach abandoned Göttingen in 1770 to live at Leyden for one memorable year 1 Peerlkamp, 512-5. Cp. L. Müller, 177, 186, 214. Cp. Mahne's Wyttenbach, 153–92. 3 L. Müller, 92 f. 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 auctor. 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). Mahne's Wyttenbach, 142-52. 2 Wyttenbach, Vita R. 148. 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. His 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. |