Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/62

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
*
*

50 D R U D fine fish, but little esteemed for food, and very rarely ex- OPMln a length of 12 inches or a weight of 2 ft>. It feeds on small freshwater animals and soft vegetable matter, and spawns in April or May. It readily crosses with the white bream, more rarely with the roach and bleak. RUDDIMAN, THOMAS (1674-1758), an eminent Scot- tish scholar, was born in October 1674, at Raggal, in the parish of Boyndie, Banffshire, where his father was a farmer. He studied Latin eagerly at the school of his native parish, and when sixteen started off to walk to Aberdeen, there to compete for a college bursary. On the way he was attacked by Gipsies, robbed of a guinea, which was all he had, and otherwise very cruelly treated ; but he persevered in his journey, reached Aberdeen, and competed for and won the bursary. He then entered the university, and four years afterwards on 21st June 1694 received the degree of M.A. For some time he acted as school- master at Laurencekirk in Kincardine. There he chanced to make the acquaintance of Dr Pitcairne, of Edinburgh, who persuaded him to remove to the Scottish capital, where he obtained the post of assistant in the Advocates' Library. As his salary was only 8, 6s. 8d. per annum, he was forced to undertake additional employment. He engaged in miscellaneous literary work, took pupils, and for some time acted as an auctioneer. His chief writings at this period were editions of Wilson's De Animi Tran- quUlitate Dialogus (1707), and the Cantici Solomonis Para- phrasis Poetica (1709) of Arthur Johnstone (ob. 1641), editor of the Delicite Poetarum Scotorum. In 1714 he published Rudiments of the Latin Tongue, which is even yet his best known work. This was intended to be an easy introduction to Latin grammar, and was so successful that it at once superseded all others. Under various forms it has been in use, down to our own day, in the schools of Scotland. In 1715 he edited, with notes and annotations, the works of George Buchanan in two volumes folio. As Ruddiman was a Jacobite, the liberal views of Buchanan seemed to him to call for frequent censure. That censure is often rather implied than openly expressed; but it excited much opposition. A society of scholars was formed in Edinburgh to " vindicate that in- comparably learned and pious author from the calumnies of Mr Thomas Ruddiman" by publishing a correct edition of his works. This they never did ; but a number of ob- scure writers from this time attacked Ruddiman with great vehemence. He replied ; and it was not till the year before his death that he said his " last word " in the con- troversy. His worldly affairs, meanwhile, grew more and more prosperous. He founded (1715) a successful printing business, and afyer some time was appointed printer to the university. He acquired the Caledonian Mercury in 1729, and in 1730 was appointed keeper of the Advocates' Library, which post, owing to failing health, he resigned in 1752. He died at Edinburgh, 19th January 1758, and was interred in Greyfriars churchyard, where in 1806 a tablet was erected to his memory. Besides the works mentioned, the following writings of Ruddiman deserve notice : an edition of Gavin Douglas's &neid of Virgil (1710) ; the editing and completion of Anderson's Selectus Diplo- nan was for many years the representative scholar of Scotland. "Writing in 1766, Dr Johnson, after reproving Boswell for some bad Latin, significantly adds "Ruddiman is dead." When Boswell proposed to write Ruddiman's life, " I should take pleasure in helping you to do honour to him," said Johnson. See Chalmers's L4f of Ruddiman (1794); Scott Mayatine, January 7, 1767 ; BosweU's Life ofJohnton. RUDE, FRANCOIS (1784-1 855), a French sculptor of great natural talent and force of character, but of an ignorance as to all that did not immediately concern his art which can best be described as out of date. He was born at Dijon, 4th January 1784, and came therefore in his youth under the influence of the democratic and Napoleonic- ideals in their full force. Till the age of sixteen he worked at his father's trade as a stovemaker, ainusin- himself with modelling in his free hours only ; but in 1809 he went up to Paris from the Dijon school of art, and became a pupil of Castellier, obtaining the Great Prize in 1812. After the second restoration of the Bourbons he retired to Brussels, where he got some work under the architect Van der Straeten, who employed him to execute nine bas reliefs in the palace of Tervueren, which he was then engaged in building. At Brussels Rude married Sophie Fremiet, the daughter of a Bonapartist compatriot, to whom he had many obligations, but, obtaining with difficulty work so ill-paid that it but just enabled him to live, he gladly availed himself of the opportunity of return to Paris, where in 1827 a statue of the Virgin for St Gervais and a Mercury Fastening his Sandals obtained much attention. His great success dates, however, from 1833, when he received the cross of the Legion of Honour for his statue of a Neapolitan Fisher Boy playing with a Tortoise, which also procured for him the important com- mission for all the ornament and one bas relief of the Arc de 1'Etoile. This relief, a work full of energy and fire, immortalizes the name of Rude. Amongst other produc- tions, we may mention the statue of Monge, 1848, Jeanne d'Arc (in garden of Luxembourg), 1852, a Calvary in bronze for the high altar of St Vincent de Paul, 1855, as well as Hebe and the Eagle of Jupiter, Love Triumphant, and Christ on the Cross, all of which appeared at the Salon of 1857 after his death. He had worked all his life long with the most extraordinary energy and given himself no rest in spite of the signs of failing health, and at last, on the 3d November 1855, he died suddenly with scarcely time to cry out. One of his noblest works, and easily accessible, is the tomb of Cavaignac, on which he placed beside his own the name of his favourite pupil Christophe. Although executed in 1840, this was not erected at Mont- martre till the year after Rude's own death. His Louis XIII., a life size statue, cast in silver, is to be seen at the Due de Luynes's chateau at Dampierre. Cato of Utica stands in the gardens of the Tuileries, and his Baptism of Christ decorates a chapel of the Madeleine. RUDE STONE MONUMENTS. The raising of com- memorative monuments of such an enduring material as stone is a practice that may be traced in all countries to the remotest times. The highly sculptured statues, obelisks, and other monumental erections of modern civi- lization are but the lineal representatives of the unhewn monoliths, dolmens, cromlechs, &c., of prehistoric times. Judging from the large number of the latter that have still survived the destructive agencies (notably those of man himself) to which they have been exposed during so many ages, it would seem that the ideas which led to their erection had as great a hold on humanity in its earlier stages of development as at the present time. In giving some idea of these rude monuments in Britain and else- where, it will be convenient to classify them as follows (see voL ii. p. 383, figs. 1-4). (1) Isolated pillars or mono- liths of unhewn stones raised on end are called Menhirs (maen, a stone, and kir, long). (2) When these monoliths are arranged in lines they become Alignments. (3) But if their linear arrangement is such as to form an enclosure (enceinte), whether circular, oval, or irregular, the group is designated by the name of Cr<>ml>.-li (see CROMLECH). (4) Instead of the monoliths remaining separate, they are sometimes placed together and covered over by one or more capstones so as to form a rude chamber ; in this case