Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 21, ROT-Siam

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R U N-
RUNCIMAN, Alexander (1736-1785), historical
painter, was born in Edinburgh in 1736. He studied at
the Foulis’s Academy, Glasgow, and at the age of thirty
proceeded to Rome where he spent five years. It was at
this time that he became acquainted with Fuseli, a kindred
spirit, between whose productions and those of Runciman
there is a marked similarity. The painter’s earliest efforts
had been in landscape; “other artists,” it was said of
him, “ talked meat and drink, but he talked landscape.”
He soon, however, turned to historical and imaginative
subjects, exhibiting his ISTausicaa at Play with her
Maidens in 1767 at the Free Society of British Artists,
Edinburgh. On his return from Italy, after a brief
residence in London, where in 1772 he exhibited in the
Royal Academy, he settled in Edinburgh, and was appointed
master of the Trustees’ Academy. He was patronized by
Sir James Clerk, whose hall at Penicuik House he decorated
with a series of subjects from Ossian. He also executed
various religious paintings and an altarpiece in the
Cowgate Episcopal Church, Edinburgh, and easel pictures
of Cymon and Iphigenia, Sigismunda Weeping over the
Heart of Tancred, and Agrippina Landing with the Ashes
of Germanicus. He died in Edinburgh on October 4,
1785. His works, while they show high intention and
considerable imagination, are frequently defective in form
and extravagant in gesture.
RUNCIMAN, John (1744-1766), historical painter, a
younger brother of the above, accompanied him to Rome,
and died at Naples in 1766. He was an artist of great
promise. His Flight into Egypt, in the National Gallery
of Scotland, is remarkable for the precision of its execution
and the mellow richness of its colouring.
RUNCORN, a market-town and seaport of Cheshire, is
pleasantly situated on the south side of the Mersey and
near the terminus in that river of the Bridgewater, the
Mersey and Irwell, and the Trent and Mersey Canals, 15
miles S.E. of Liverpool and 15 N.E. of Chester. The
Mersey, which here contracts to 400 yards at high water,
is crossed by a wrought-iron railway bridge 1500 feet in
length. The modern prosperity of the town dates from
the completion in 1773 of the Bridgewater Canal, which
here descends into the Mersey by a succession of locks.
The town was made an independent landing port in 1847,
and within recent years large additions have been made
to the docks and warehouses. The town possesses ship¬
building yards, iron foundries, rope works, tanneries, and
soap and alkali works. The population of the urban sani¬
tary district (area 1490 acres) in 1871 was 12,443, and in
1881 it was 15,126.
Owing to the Mersey being here fordable at low water, the place
was in early times of considerable military importance. On a rock
which formerly jutted some distance farther into the Mersey
Ethelfleda erected, a castle in 916, but of the building there are
now no remains. She is also said to have founded a town, hut
probably it soon afterwards fell into decay, as it is not noticed in
Domesday. The ferry is noticed in a charter in the 12th century.
RUNE. See Alphabet, vol. i. pp. 607, 612, and
Scandinavian Languages.
RUNEBERG, Johan Ludwig (1804-1877), Swedish
poet, was born at Jakobstad, in Finland, on the 5th of
February 1804. Brought up by an uncle at Uleaborg, he
entered the university of Abo in the autumn term of 1822,
and in 1826 began to contribute verses to the local news¬
papers. In the spring of 1827 he received the degree of
doctor of philosophy, and shared in the calamity which, in
September of the same year, destroyed the city and uni¬
versity of Abo with fire. Runeberg accepted a tutorship
at Saarijarvi, in the interior of Finland, where he remained
for three years, studying hard and writing actively. The
university had been removed after the great fire to Hel¬
singfors, and in 1830 the young poet returned thither, as
-RUN
amanuensis to the council of the university. In the same
year he published his first volume of Dikier (Poems), and a
collection of Servian folksongs translated into Swedish.
In 1831 his verse romance Grafven i Perrho (The Grave
in Perrho) received the small gold medal of the Swedish
Academy, and the poet married the daughter of Dr Teng-
strom, archbishop of Finland. For a tractate on the Medea
of Euripides he was in the same year appointed university
lecturer on Roman literature. In 1832 he leaped at one
bound to the foremost place among Swedish poets with
his beautiful little epic Elgskyttarne (The Elk-Hunters);
and in 1833 he published a second collection of lyrical
poems. His comedy Friaren frdn Landet (The Country
Lover) was not a success in 1834. He returned to more
characteristic fields in 1836, when he published the
charming idyl in hexameters called Hanna. In 1837
Runeberg accepted the chair of Latin at Borgfi College,
and resided in that little town for the rest of his life.
From Borgfi he continued to pour forth volumes of
verse, and he was now recognized in his remote Finland
retirement as second only to Tegn6r among the poets of
Sweden. In 1841 he published Nadeschda, a romance of
Russian life, and Julqudllen (Christmas Eve), an idyl.
The third volume of his lyrical pieces bears the date 1843,
and the noble cycle of unrhymed verse romances called
Rung Fjalar was published in 1844. Finally, in 1848,
he achieved a great popular success by his splendid series
of poems about the war of independence in 1808, a series
which bears the name of Fdnrik Stdls Sdgner (Ensign
Steel’s Stories); a second series of these appeared in
1860. From 1847 to 1850 the poet was rector of Borg§,
College, a post which he laid down to take the only
journey out of Finland which he ever accomplished, a visit
to Sweden in 1851. His later writings may be briefly
mentioned. In 1853 he collected his prose essays into a
volume entitled Smdrre Berdttelser. In the same year he
was made president of a committee for the preparation of
a national Psalter, which issued, in 1857, a Psalm-Book
largely contributed by Runeberg for public use. He once
more attempted comedy in his Kan ej (Can’t) in 1862,
and tragedywith infinitely more success, in his stately
Kungarne pd Salamis (The Kings at Salamis) in 1863.
He collected his writings in six volumes in 1873-74.
Runeberg died at Borgfi on the 6th of May 1877.
The poems of Runeberg show the influence of the Greeks and of
Goethe upon his mind but he possesses a great originality. In
an age of conventionality he was boldly realistic, yet never to the
sacrifice of artistic beauty. Less known to the rest of Europe
than Tegner, he yet is now generally considered to excel him as a
poet, and to mark the highest attainment hitherto reached by
imaginative literature in Sweden.
The life of Johan Ludvig Runeherg lias not yet been written in detail, although
it is said to be in preparation. The fullest account of his life and works is that
which forms the introduction to the Samlade Skrifter of 1873. It was written
by Prof. Nyblom.. A minute criticism of Runeberg’s principal poems, with
translations, occupies pp. 98—133 of Gosse’s Studies in the Literature of Northern
Europe, 1879. A selection of his lyrical pieces was published in an English
translation by Messrs Magnusson and Palmer in 1878.
RUNNING. In this mode of progression the step is
lighter and gait more rapid than in walking, from which
it differs in consisting of a succession of springs from toe
to toe, instead of a series of steps from toe to heel. As
an athletic exercise, it has been in vogue from the earliest
times, and the simple foot race, Spd/xos, run straight from
starting point to goal, was" a game of the Greek pent¬
athlon. It was diversified with the SiavAoSp6p,os, in which
a distance mark was rounded and the starting and winning
points were the same, and also by the 8p6p,os ottXltwv,
which might be compared to the modern heavy marching
order race. In ancient Italy running was practised in
circus exhibitions, as described by Virgil (J?n. v. 286 sq.).
In modern times it has been developed almost into a science
by the Anglo-Saxon race in Great Britain and North
America, till the distances recently covered appear almost