Daniel Albert Wyttenbach
A student of Hemsterhuis, Valckenaer and Ruhnken, he was an exponent of the methods of criticism which they established, and with them he laid the foundations of modern Greek scholarship.
He was born at Bern, of a noble family, and was extremely proud of his lineage, particularly his descent from Thomas Wyttenbach, professor of theology in Basel at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th century, who had taught Huldrych Zwingli and other distinguished pupils.
He moved to Marburg in 1756, partly because he had studied there under the famous Christian Wolff, and embodied the philosophical principles of his master in his own theological teaching.
He is said to have taught his subject with great clearness, and with equal seriousness and piety, often referring to God as the supreme mathematician, who had constructed all things by number, measure and weight.
Wyttenbach's university course at Marburg was troubled about the middle of the time by mental unrest, due to the fascination exercised over him by John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.
[3] Up to that time, Wyttenbach had submitted passively to his father's wishes concerning his career, but he now turned away from theological lectures, and devoted his leisure to the task of deepening and extending his knowledge of Greek literature.
His father, realizing the strength of his son's pure passion for scholarship, permitted and even advised him to seek Christian Gottlob Heine at the University of Göttingen.
Before it reached him, Ruhnken wrote a kind letter to Wyttenbach, which the recipient "read, re-read and kissed," and another on receipt of the tract, in which the great scholar declared that he had not expected to find in Germany such knowledge of Greek, such power of criticism, and such mature judgment, especially in one so young.
Ruhnken encouraged Wyttenbach to follow his own example, for he too had been designed by his parents for the Christian ministry in Germany, but had settled at Leiden on the invitation of Tiberius Hemsterhuis.
He spent a year learning the language of the people, attending the lectures of the great duumviri of Leiden, and collating manuscripts of Plutarch.
About this time two requests were made to him for an edition of the Moralia of Plutarch, for which a recension of the tract De sera numinis vindicta had marked him out in the eyes of scholars.
Wyttenbach, influenced at once by the reputation of the university, and by the liberality of the Oxonians in tendering him assistance of different kinds, declined the offer of the Bipontine Society — very fortunately, since their press was soon destroyed by the French.
Randolph, Wyttenbach's Oxford correspondent, advised that the next portion should be sent through the British ambassador at Hamburg, and the manuscript was duly consigned to him "in a little chest well protected by pitch."
After sending Randolph a number of letters without getting any answer, Wyttenbach in disgust put all thought of the edition from him, but at last the missing box was discovered in a forgotten corner at Hamburg, where it had lain for two years and a half.
In 1805 he narrowly escaped with his life from the great gunpowder explosion, which killed 150 people, among them the Greek scholar Jean Luzac, Wyttenbach's colleague in the university.
Shortly before his death, he obtained the licence of the king of Holland to marry his sister's daughter, Johanna Gallien, who had for twenty years been his housekeeper, secretary and research assistant.
Wyttenbach died of apoplexy in 1820, and he was buried in the garden of his country house near Leiden, which stood, as he noted, within sight of the dwellings of Descartes and Boerhaave.
The precise study of grammar, syntax and style, and the careful criticism of texts by the light of the best manuscript evidence, were upheld by these scholars in the Netherlands when they were almost entirely neglected elsewhere on the Continent, and were only pursued with partial success in England.
