On the death of Oudendorp, the normal tradition of Latin scholarship might have been maintained at Leyden Burman II by the appointment of Pieter Burman II, instead of Ruhnken. Burman II (1714-1778), the nephew of the elder Burman, was born at Amsterdam, and studied at Leyden. In 1736 he became professor of 'Eloquence' and History at Franeker. In 1742 he was called to the Athenaeum of his native city, where he continued to teach until near the end of his life. His most important work was his edition of the Latin Anthology (1759-73). His Propertius was completed by Santen (1780). His edition of the Ad Herennium and De Inventione was twice reprinted. He also edited Aristophanes with the notes of Bergler, and Claudian with those of the elder Burman. He was only in a secondary sense a pupil of Duker and Drakenborch; he was primarily a pupil of the elder Burman, to whom he was superior in his intellectual attainments, and especially in his knowledge of Greek. He was devoted to his uncle's memory, and scholars who were silent on the merits of the elder Burman were subject to the suspicion and even the vituperation of the nephew'. He has been eulogised as a stimulating teacher', and as an excellent Latin poet3. Schrader At Franeker Johannes Schrader (1722-83), a pupil of Burman II, and of Hemsterhuys and Valckenaer, was professor of 'Eloquence' and History for the last thirty-five years of his life. His Musaeus, published at the age of twenty, and reprinted in the following century, was inspired by the influence of Hemsterhuys. His Observationes and Emendationes and his Epistola Critica in Part II of Burman's Latin Anthology give proof of a skill in emendation not unworthy of N. Heinsius, combined with a higher degree of judgement. He exhibits a sound knowledge of metre, and, in the preface to his Emendationes, gives a long list of the metrical blunders of some notable scholars'. His Latin poems include a spirited set of 1 L. Müller, 56. 2 Santen in Pref. to his ed. of Burman II's Propertius, and D. J. van Lennep's Laudatio H. Boschii, viii (ib. 98 n). His feuds with Saxe and Klotz are recounted by G. C. Harless, De Vitis Philologorum, i 95—234; cp. Saxe, Onomasticon, vi 533-5; Bursian, i 446. 3 Peerlkamp, 512-5. ⚫ pp. 30 f. elegiacs written in defence of the university of Franeker (1773)'. He was an excellent teacher and had many pupils'. Greek scholarship was meanwhile ably represented by Lodewyk Kaspar Valckenaer (1715—1785), who was born Valckenaer at Leeuwarden and was educated there, and also at Franeker and Leyden. At Franeker he was a pupil of Hemsterhuys, whom he twice succeeded as professor of Greek, first at Franeker (1741-66), and afterwards at Leyden (1766-85). He had previously produced an edition of Ammonius, De Differentia Adfinium Vocabulorum. As professor at Franeker, he edited Iliad xxii, with scholia (1747), and in the same year brought out a new edition of Fulvio Orsini's Virgilius illustratus. His masterly work on Euripides, begun at Franeker in his edition of the Phoenissae (1755), was continued at Leyden in his Hippolytus, and in his Diatribe on the Fragments (1768). This was followed by his edition of Theocritus, Bion and Moschus. His Fragments of Callimachus, and his treatise on the Alexandrian impostor, the Jew Aristobulus, were published after his death by Luzac. He was mainly devoted to the study of the Greek poets, but his familiarity with the Latin poets is proved by his preface to the Virgilius illustratus. He was also specially familiar with hellenistic Greek3. Ruhnken The 'Greek triumvirate' of the Netherlands comprises the names of Hemsterhuys, Valckenaer, and Ruhnken. David Ruhneken, or Ruhkenius, commonly called Ruhnken (1723-98), was a native of Northern Pomerania, who, after being a schoolfellow of Kant at Königsberg, went to study for two years at Wittenberg under the Latin scholar, J. W. von Berger, and the historian, J. D. Ritter. He completed his course at Wittenberg by writing a dissertation on Galla Placidia (1743). Finding from his professors that an accurate knowledge of Greek hardly existed except in the Netherlands, he followed the advice of Ernesti, who urged him not to resort to the teaching of J. M. Gesner, at Göttingen, but to betake himself to Hemsterhuys at 1 Peerlkamp, 518 f. 2 L. Müller, 99 f. 3 Cp. Wyttenbach's Vita Ruhnkenii, 175–181 etc. ed. Bergman; J. T. Bergman's Memoria (Utrecht, 1871); L. Müller, 82 f; and Wilamowitz, Eur. Heracles i 231f, ‘Er übertraf an Wucht der Gelehrsamkeit alle Zeitgenossen'. Leyden. Against the wishes of his parents, he left for the Netherlands. He was delighted with the dignity and courtesy with which he was received by Hemsterhuys', who thenceforth became his sole model and example, and whose portrait he afterwards drew as that of the ideal critic. Ruhnken began with Greek, and read through all the Greek and Latin Classics in chronological order. In Greek he used the Greek lexicographers themselves, with Stephens' Thesaurus, and an interleaved copy of Scapula; in Latin, an interleaved Faber. The first-fruits of at least five years of study were his two Epistolae Criticae, (1) on Homer and Hesiod, dedicated to Valckenaer (1749), and (2) on Callimachus and Apollonius Rhodius, dedicated to Ernesti (1751). Meanwhile, he had begun to help Alberti, who had been led to undertake an edition of Hesychius, owing to his interest in the 'sacred glosses'. With a view to qualifying for a professorship in law, he prepared a dissertation on the Greek Commentators on the Digest (1752). His next work was his edition of the Platonic Lexicon of Timaeus, from a Ms (in the Coislin library), a specimen of which had been printed by Montfaucon. The transcript used by Ruhnken was made by Jean Capperonnier through the kind offices of Dr Henry Gally, Canon of Norwich, whom Ruhnken had met while he accompanied Alberti to Spa. Its publication, with the learned notes of Ruhnken, drew the attention of scholars to the literary interest of Plato. Wyttenbach and Brunck agreed in considering this volume as at once the briefest and the most learned work that had been published in connexion with Greek. Ruhnken had now been for ten years at Leyden. Ritter, Berger, and Ernesti were eager that he should become a professor in Germany, but nothing would induce him to leave the Netherlands. He enjoyed taking an occasional private tutorship in or near Leyden, which would allow of a certain amount of leisure for travelling and visiting foreign libraries. In 1755 he went for a year to Paris, where he devoted a large part of his time to making transcripts and extracts from MSS. In Paris, besides enjoying the intellectual life of the place, he became acquainted with two English scholars, Musgrave and Tyrwhitt, while the circle of his 1 Wyttenbach, Vita Ruhnkenii, 2 1754; Wyttenbach, 59. 3 ib. 71. From a portrait by H. Pothoven (1791), engraved by P. H. Jonxis (1792), and lithographed by Oehme and Müller (Brunsv. 1827). French friends included Villoison, Larcher, and Sainte-Croix. Hemsterhuys, however, advised him not to remain abroad too long. On his return, he was appointed, in 1757, to assist Hemsterhuys as Reader in Greek, and, four years later, succeeded to the Latin Chair vacated by Oudendorp. His inaugural oration De Doctore Umbratico, interesting in itself as showing by contrast the professor's own ideal of the true scholar, gave offence to certain pedants, and especially to certain head-masters, who assumed that the portrait was meant for themselves. Accordingly, when their pupils left them for Leyden, they suggested that it was unnecessary for them to attend the lectures of the Latin professor. Any foreigner holding a public position in Holland was regarded with a jealous eye, and Burman II and Schrader may well have thought that they had a better claim to the Latin Chair. On his appointment, Ruhnken went once more through the Latin Classics, and entered with vigour on his three courses of customary lectures, (1) on Universal History, (2) on Roman Antiquities, and (3) on 'Eloquentia', i.e. the public exposition of a Latin author. In this last his favourite subjects were Terence, Suetonius, Cicero, ad Familiares, and Ovid's Heroides'. He was content with a comparatively small class,-a class larger, however, than that of J. F. Gronovius, who in the palmy days of Leyden sometimes had scarcely ten pupils. He declined the Chair vacated by Gesner at Göttingen, and recommended the appointment of Heyne (1763). By 1765 he had completed Alberti's Hesychius. The numerous renderings of extracts from the Greek Orators in Rutilius Lupus led to his prefixing to his edition of that work an elaborate Historia Critica Oratorum Graecorum (1768). He also edited Velleius Paterculus and Cornelius Nepos. While reading the Greek rhetoricians in connexion with Rutilius Lupus, he noticed a sudden change of style in the Rhetoric of Apsines, and thus discovered that the work of Apsines had been interpolated with passages from another Rhetoric, which a quotation by Joannes Siceliotes led him to identify as that of Cassius Longinus". In this connexion he wrote a treatise De Vita et 1 Cp. his Dictata in Ter., Sueton., and Ovid's Heroides. |