JOHANNES BRANDLS.
IN the compass of some thirty pages, every line in which is marked with the delicate discernment due to intimate know- ledge, Dr. Curtius, the distinguished historian of Greece, has thrown off a sketch in memory of a recently departed friend,*—one who, though not familiarly known to the general public, possessed gifts of so high an order that the tidings of his death in the prime of fife imparted to his friends—and they were in all countries—the shill sensation that an existence had been blotted out the like of which, for brightness and for fullness, for genial richness of sympathies and solid force of mind, it was not known where again to find. Johannes Bmudis must be classed amongst the men cut off before time had allowed of their leaving in accom- plished work the monuments that must ensure from posterity * Johannes Brandis: ein LettensGild. Von Ernst Curtius. Berlin. 1873. any fall recognition of their powers, His occasional writings, however luminous, represent mere splinters of his intel- lectual vigour, being in the main dissertations on more or less technical subjects ,— incidental sparks thrown off by a busy brain, and which no more furnish a measure of its full force than a chip can give of the range and depth of rock from which it has been knocked off. In Brandis there existed the rare unison of faculties so distinct as to seem hardly compatible, the faculties that mark off from each other the bookworm and the man of the world. He combined a brain that would labour with plodding assiduity in the driest fields of erudition, with an eye that was at the same time keenly on the alert for the living interests of the age. Like Wilhelm von Humboldt, his nature chemically assimilated the abstractedly intellectual ethics of the absorbed savant's atmosphere with the lively instincts and varied sympathies of the busy man of the world, who, living amidst the stir and din of its flying machinery, watches intently at every point the mysterious working of its.complicated wheels.
Johannes Brandis was the third son of the eminent historian of Greek philosophy, and was born in 1830 at Bonn. Founded by the statesmen who reared the revived Prussian monarchy in 1815, as an outwork for the spread of German culture in the newly reconquered provinces, that University had become the home of a galaxy of distinguished men of letters. Here the veteran Niebuhr took up his residence, here Bethmann-Hollveg lived, and here there grew up, under the august influence of these . and other eminent scholars, an especial nursery of Classicism. Thespirit of theAntique thus pervaded the parental home from the earliest days of infancyi when events contributed to intensify the boy's disposition in this direction. In 1837 Professor Brandis, at Schelling's sugges- tion, received from King Otho a call to Greece, to organise' a system of public instruction, and so for several yeses -.-at the period when intellect is most pliant—Johannes Brandis lived in the beautiful scenery of Hellenic landscape, and amidst the stirring associations of Classical sites. Nor was he left without careful schooling to train his mind in the spirit of ancient litera- ture. The watchful father had singled out a young undergraduate as a fit pedagogue. This undergraduate was no other than,Dr. Curtius, who accompanied the Brandis family to Greece. It is self-evident how such a residence in such surroundings waa cal- culated to affect the mind of an ardent and gifted boy, and it may be inferred that the early transfer from the not unpedantic atmosphere of German scholasticism, to the experiences of lengthened residence in foreign regions of so completely dif- ferent a character, had much to do with Johannes Brandis's absolute freedom from any taint of priggishness in manner, and the singular ease and versatility of his carriage in the varied intercourse of cosmopolitan society. In the instructive company of his learned tutor many parts of Greece were visited. "In later years," says Dr. Curtius, "it afforded especial pleasure to talk over our common wanderings in emulous search for fragments of painted pottery; our summer residences at Kephissia, and on the Pirus, and our excursions to and fro through the Archipelago." But with years a sterner academy was deemed necessary ; and after an interval, Dr. Clutha, who had then become the Crown Prince's tutor, again met his pupil at Bonn, as a student full of zeal and industry, and who was trying his hand at the solution of a problem which then much engaged attention. The Assyrian discoveries were at that period fresh, and scepticism was prevalent as to the interpretations furnished by English students. The Bonn Faculty having in- stituted a prize essay on the subject, Brandis, who felt a natural instinct for philological decipherings, competed for and won it. In December, 1852, he received his doctor's degree from the bands of his father, and then proceeded to Berlin, with the intention of lecturing at the University,which, however, he abandoned on receiv- ing an unexpected call in the following year. Baron Bunsen, then engaged on his great work on Egyptian chronology, had been struck by the disquisition of his old friend's son on Assyrian antiquities, and asked for his assistance as private amanuensis. Young Brandis readily agreed, and became an inmate of Prussia House until Bunsen's recall abruptly terminated his stay in England, though not before he had established enduring relations with that eminent scholar, Dr. Norris, and had been stimulated to prosecute with increased vigour his linguistic studies. The result was an "Essay on the Principles of the Cuneiform System," which gave him an established position amongst decipherers. On his departure from England, Brandis returned to live with his father at Bonn. The latter took in private pupils, mostly foreigners, and the direction of these young men was specially entrusted to the son, who be- sides lectured as Privat Docent in the University. In this manner were spent three studious and uneventful years, marked,
however, by the publication of a Latin disquisition on the earliest Greek Trine-reckonings, until in 1857 there occurred a change as abrupt as it was complete in the sphere and method of his life. The present Empress of Germany always resided much on the Rhine, and with her pronounced intellectual tastes took pleasure in the society of the distinguished men congregated on its banks. The younger Brandis was well known to her through various channels, and she recognised in him the qualities she had long been in search of for a private secretary of an exceptional character— one in whom she could place implicit reliance, and who might prove more a trusty friend and confidential counsellor than a mere executor of her daily commands. She thoroughly appreciated Brandis's moral and intellectual value, and with the delicate instinct of a mind which in youth imbibed the essence of the re- fined culture which Goethe diffused through the Weimar Court, the Princess accompanied her offer with assurances which im- parted a higher grace to the nomination, and afforded the guarantee that it was not meant to bind Brandis henceforth to the menial obligations of a Court drudge. The distinction graciously con- ferred was ever responded to with devotion, and if the confidence bestowed was great, so also was the appreciation entertained by its recipient.
At the end of 1857 Brendle joined his Royal mistress, and entered the Court circles, of which he remained a member until his death. It is not possible to recount in detail his personal experiences in this last phase of his life. His existence, though unostentatious, brought him into close contact with a variety of remarkable men and a variety of interesting occurrences. Undoubtedly, there must be preserved much correspondence which, it may be hoped, will some day be published. The position Brandis took up in Berlin was quite unique. Known to possess the full confidence of his Mistress, advanced by the title of Greheimer Kabinetarath to the foremost rank of Prussian civil precedence, Brandis remained true to his intellectual nature, and never contracted the taint of vulgar courtiership. He made himself in the Berlin world a social link for bringing together precious intellectual units that otherwise would have remained isolated. He delighted to be a medium for promoting affinities of the highest type. For Brandis felt the interest of superior intelligence for marked characters and intellectual quantities of the most varied nature, while he was pre- eminently distinguished by his absolute freedom from every shred of that scholastic pedantry which is so repugnant to the so-called beau monde, the giddier population of salons, &midis was equally at home with diplomatists and warriors, with pro- fessors and with politicians, and nothing gave him greater pleasure than to assemble in social gatherings around a dinner-table men of real mark and to stimulate their conver- sation. Those who had the advantage of being admitted to these choice circles, will ever retain a lively recollection of the genial charm which Brandis imparted to these remarkable symposia. At the same time, true to severe study, he was an assiduous frequenter of some noted literary gatherings for discus- sions eminently typical of Germany. Such was the Wednesday Society, founded by Dorner and Bethmann-Hollveg ; and such also was the Grw,ca, the members of which meet on Friday evenings to read Greek authors ; and Dr. Cartias expressly recalls the vigour with which on one occasion Brandis commented on the " Birds " of Atistophanes. And from these learned meetings be would hasten off to Court or to an aristocratic salon, and mingle amongst the gay throng with all the ease of a man who never troubled himself with aught but amusement. Nevertheless he contrived quietly to do much hard brain-work. The Empress was ever ready to grant him ample vacations, and these he latterly spent either in journeys in prosecution of special studies, or in retirement at a country house he had built near Bonn. In 1866 he completed a volume of which Dr. Curthis says "that there are few productions of German science which are marked by such conscientiousness, the fruits of original research alone, derived from scattered evidence, sifted by the individual hand and the individual eye." This book was "The System of Measures, Coins, and Weights in Asia Minor to the Time of Alexander the Great," which we believe to be admittedly without rival, though but a fragment, as Brandis up to his death was engaged in pushing his inquiries into the systems prevailing in the States of continental Greece, with the view of making a complete survey. In the course of these investigations, his attention was diverted to Cyprian antiquities, and his old philological instincts were quickened to grapple with the problems of the Cyprian alphabet, on the discovery of the great Cypro-Phoenician inscription now in the British Museum. This was his last labour, and though not completed, it proved thoroughly successful. On the 1st May,
1873, Brendle wrote to Dr. Curtius :—" Here you have my work. It contains the story of the deciphering of Cyprian writing awl the exposition of its system. There will follow an interpretation of inscriptions and of legends on coins, and a dissertation on the Cyprian language." None of these last were ever written, but the first appeared, after the author's death, in the September number of the Berlin Academy "Transactions." Immediately After the date of this letter, Brandis came over to England. He had repeatedly visited this country, with the language of which he was thoroughly conversant (as, indeed, he was an admirable linguist), and where he possessed many friends. On this occasion, as ever, he was keenly alive to whatever could enlist the interest of an observant foreigner. While the win room and the vase collection in the British Museum would occupy him for hours, he yet found time to watch with close inquiry the varied incidenta of our general life and the pending questions of the moment. 'Brandis took particular interest in the social problems connected with the administration of our Poor Laws, and a few days before hie departure he accompanied the writer of this paper on an expedition to the 'Goliath' training-ship, where he spent a whole day in the closest examination, so that we remember Captain Bourchier par- ticularly remarking that he never had been so thoroughly inspected before. On thefollowing day Brendle started to accompany his royal mistress on her visit to the Vienna Exhibition, seemingly in the beat health. To his friends, however, it was known that his life was precarious. From childhood he bad had an organic defect of the heart, which had been aggravated by attacks of pleurisy. It appears that daring the stay at Vienna he fatigued himself much, and that he complained of the intense heat. One who saw him the evening before he left Vienna told the writer that he was, how- ever, in his usual eager vein for knowledge. He spent these last hours of his Vienna stay in a gathering specially convened-for the purpose of affording him information as to the political conditioa of Austria, and late at night he left the room, after animated talk, to start in the morning with the Empress for Baden. But in the railway-carriage he was suddenly taken ill ; inflammation on the chest set in, which at once affected the heart. Under charge 01 the Empress's physician he remained at Linz, but, despite all the appliances of medical skill, he succumbed to his malady after some days' suffering, during which, in his wanderings, as he heard the murmurings of the Danube beneath his windows, he fondly fancied himself listening to the flow of his favourite Rhine.
It is beyond the power of words to convey to those who never met him an adequate conception of the peculiar impression Brandis made upon those who knew him. An indescribable and enduring charm riveted friends to a nature which instinctively diffused the sensation of singular reliability, of consummate dis- crimination, of rare judgment, and of a cheerful serenity which, by the complete absence of all spasmodic vehemence, imparted luminousness to the emanations of a mind ever actively interested in intellectual problems, ever keenly alive to whatever had a claim on the care, the attention, the sympathy of thoughtful men. Truly it will be said of Brandis by all who knew him that he was one whose memory will not fade from their minds, and that the extinction of his rich, bright, merry nature has been to them tantamount to the extinction of light.
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