David Ruhnken - University of Leiden

University of Leiden

Ruhnken followed the advice of his friends at Wittenberg and early in 1744 went to the University of Leiden, where, stimulated by the influence of Richard Bentley, Tiberius Hemsterhuis had founded the only real school of Greek learning on the Continent since the days of Joseph Justus Scaliger and Isaac Casaubon. Hemsterhuis and Ruhnken were close friends during the twenty-three years between Ruhnken's arrival in the Netherlands in 1743 and the death of Hemsterhuis in 1766. Ruhnken and Valckenaer were the two pupils of the great master on whom his inheritance must devolve.

As Ruhnken's reputation spread, many efforts were made to attract him back to Germany, but after settling in Leiden, he only left the country once, when he spent a year in Paris, ransacking the public libraries (1755). For work achieved, this year of Ruhnken may compare even with the famous year which Ritschl spent in Italy.

In 1757 Ruhnken was appointed lecturer in Greek, to assist Hemsterhuis, and in 1761 he succeeded Oudendorp, with the title of "ordinary professor of history and eloquence", as Latin professor. This promotion attracted the enmity of some native Netherlanders, who deemed themselves more worthy of the chair of Latin. Ruhnken's defence was to publish works on Latin literature which eclipsed and silenced his rivals.

In 1766 Valckenaer succeeded Hemsterhuis in the Greek chair. The intimacy between the two colleagues was only broken by Valckenaer's death in 1785, and stood the test of common candidature for the office (an important one at Leiden) of 12th Librarian of Leiden University, in which Ruhnken was successful. Ruhnken's later years were clouded by severe domestic misfortune, and by the political commotions which, after the outbreak of the war with England in 1780, troubled the Netherlands without ceasing, and threatened to extinguish the University of Leiden.