Ludolf, a very learned writer in the eighteenth century, was born at Blomberg in Westphalia. When very young, he was, upon the recommendation of Baron Spanheim, appointed tutor to the two sons of the Count de Schwerin, prime minister of the king of Prussia, who, upon our author's quitting that station, procured him a pension of four hundred livres. He was promised a professorship in the university of Joachim, and till this should become vacant, being then but twenty-five years of age, he resolved to travel. He read lectures at Utrecht, went to England, and thence proceeded to France, where he collated Suidas with three manuscripts in the king's library, which furnished him with a great many fragments that had never been published. He was honoured with the degree of doctor by the university of Cambridge, which made him several advantageous offers to continue there, but he was called to Berlin, and there installed in the professorship which had been promised him. He afterwards went to Antwerp; and being brought over to the Catholic religion, he abjured that of the Protestants. The king of France rewarded him with a pension, and ordered him to be admitted a supernumerary associate of the Academy of Inscriptions. But he enjoyed this only a short time, having died in 1716, at the age of forty-six. He was a great master of Latin, and wrote well in that language; but his chief excellence consisted in his skill in the Greek language, to which he almost entirely devoted himself. He wrote many works, the principal of which are, 1. Historia Critica Homeri; 2. Jamblicus de Vita Pythagorae; 3. An edition of Suidas, Greek and Latin, in three volumes, folio; 4. An edition of Aristophanes, Greek and Latin, in folio; 5. A new edition of the Greek New Testament, with Dr Mills's Variations, in folio.