The death of Dr. Georg Brandes has removed one of
the most striking literary figures of our time. The cosmo- politanism of his enthusiasm was a new thing in his native Denmark. The surprise which his points of view caused in Copenhagen might have led to no contention if he had not also challenged his contemporaries in the various spheres of politics, philosophy and religion. He was an uncompromising, not to say a contumacious, personality. Like most voluminous writers, he produced uneven work, but his series of hooks known under the general heading of " Main Streams of Literature in the Nineteenth Century " are justly celebrated. For a time he went into voluntary exile in Germany, but when he returned to Denmark to occupy a private chair, the University of Copenhagen, which had boycotted him, tacitly acknowledged his pre-eminence by leaving the Chair of Literature vacant. Brandes was called a critic; but he was rather a poet in the strict sense that he helped to make things—reputations, movements, enthusiasm.
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