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See also: German See also: philo-
logist and critic, was See also: born on the 15th of See also: February 1759 at Hainrode, a little See also: village not far from See also: Nordhausen, in the province of See also: Hanover
.
His See also: father was the village schoolmaster and organist
.
In See also: time the See also: family removed to Nordhausen, and there See also: young See also: Wolf went to the grammar school, where he soon acquired all the Latin and See also: Greek that the masters could teach him, besides learning French, See also: Italian, See also: Spanish and See also: music
.
The precocity of his attainments was only equalled by the force of will and confidence in his own See also: powers which characterized him throughout See also: life
.
After two years of solitary study; at the age of eighteen, Wolf went (1777) to the university of See also: Gottingen
.
His first See also: act there was a prophecy—one of those prophecies which spring from the conscious power to bring about their fulfilment
.
He had to choose his " faculty," and See also: chose one which then existed only in his own mind, the faculty of " See also: philology." What is even more remarkable, the omen was accepted
.
He carried his point, and was enrolled as he desired
.
C
.
G
.
See also: Heyne was then the chief See also: ornament of Gottingen, and Wolf and he were not on See also: good terms
.
Heyne excluded him from his lectures, and brusquely condemned
Wolf's views on See also: Homer
.
Wolf, however, pursued his studies in the university library, from which he borrowed with his old avidity . During 1779–1783 Wolf was a schoolmaster, first at See also: Ilfeld, then at See also: Osterode
.
His success as a teacher was striking, and he found time to publish an edition of the Symposium of See also: Plato, which excited See also: notice, and led to his promotion (1783) to a chair in the Prussian university of See also: Halle
.
The moment was a critical one in the See also: history of See also: education
.
The See also: literary impulse of the See also: Renaissance was almost spent; scholarship had become dry and trivial
.
A new school, that of See also: Locke and See also: Rousseau, sought to make teaching more
See also: modern and more human, but at the sacrifice of See also: mental discipline and scientific aim
.
Wolf was eager to throw himself into the contest on the See also: side of antiquity
.
In Halle (1783-1807), by the force of his will and the enlightened aid of the ministers of See also: Frederick the See also: Great, he was able to carryout his long-cherished ideas and found the science of philology
.
Wolf defined philology broadly as `l know-ledge of human nature as exhibited in antiquity." The See also: matter of such a science, he held, must be sought in the history and education of some highly cultivated nation, to be studied in written remains, See also: works of See also: art, and whatever else bears the stamp of See also: national thought or skill
.
It has therefore to do with both history and language, but primarily as a science of interpretation, in which See also: historical facts and linguistic facts take their place i11 an organic whole
.
Such was the ideal which Wolf had in his mind when he established the philological seminarium at Halle
.
Wolf's writings make little show in a library, and were always subordinate to his teaching
.
During his time at Halle he published his commentary on the See also: Leptines of See also: Demosthenes (1789)—which suggested to his pupil, Aug
.
Boeckh, the Public See also: Economy of Athens—and a little later the celebrated Prolegomena to Homer (1795)
.
This See also: book, the See also: work with which his name is chiefly associated, was thrown off in See also: comparative haste to meet an immediate need
.
It has all the merits of a great piece of oral teaching—command of method, suggestiveness, breadth of view
.
The reader does not feel that he has to do with a theory, but with great ideas, which are See also: left to bear fruit in his mind (see HOMER)
.
The publication led to an unpleasant polemic with Heyne, who absurdly accused him of reproducing what he had heard from him at Gottingen
.
The Halle professorship ended tragically, and with it the happy and productive See also: period of Wolf's life
.
He was swept away, and his university with him, by the deluge of the French invasion
.
A painful gloom oppressed his remaining years (1807–1824), which he spent at Berlin
.
He became so fractious and intolerant as to alienate some of his warmest See also: friends
.
He gained a place in the department of education, through the exertions of W. von Humboldt
.
When this became unendurable, he once more took a professorship
.
But he no longer taught with his old success; and he wrote very little . His most finished work, the Darstellung der Alterthumswissenschaft, though published at Berlin (1807), belongs essentially to the Halle time . At length his See also: health gave way
.
He was advised to try the See also: south of See also: France
.
He got as far as See also: Marseilles, and, dying there on the 8th of See also: August 1824, was laid in the classic See also: soil of that See also: ancient Hellenic city
.
Mark See also: Pattison wrote an admirable sketch of Wolf's life and work in the See also: North See also: British Review of See also: June 1865, reproduced in his Essays (1889); see also J
.
E
.
Sandys, Hist. of Class
.
Schol. iii
.
(1908), pp
.
51-60
.
Wolf's Kleine Schriften were edited by G
.
See also: Bernhardy (Halle, 1869)
.
Works not included are the Prolegomena, the Letters to Heyne (Berlin, 1797), the commentary on the Leptines (Halle, 1789) and a See also: translation of the Clouds of Aristophanes (Berlin, 1811)
.
To these must be added the Vorlesungen on Iliad i.-iv., taken from the notes of a pupil and edited by Usteri (See also: Bern, 1830)
.
(D
.
B
.
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