No More Learning

His father had made his fortune in trade; and the idea
of a tradesman's son was almost as repulsive to Lady Judith as
that of a blackamoor. She married him because her father made
her marry him, and in her own phraseology the matter was
not worth fighting about. " She had broken just two years be-
fore with the only man she had ever loved, had renounced him
in a fit of pique and passion on account of some scandal about a
French dancing-girl; and from that hour she had assumed an
air of recklessness: she had danced, flirted, talked, and carried
on in a manner that delighted the multitude and shocked the
prudes. Bath and Tunbridge Wells had rung with her sayings
and doings; and finally she surrendered herself, not altogether
unwillingly, to the highest bidder.
<<
She was burdened with debt, never knew what it was to have
a crown piece of ready money. At cards she had to borrow first
of one admirer and then of another. She had been able to get
plenty of credit for gowns and trinketry from a harpy class of
West End tradespeople, who speculated in Lady Judith's beauty


## p. 2294 (#492) ###########################################

2294
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
as they might have done in some hazardous but hopeful stock;
counting it almost a certainty that she would make a splendid
match and recoup them all.
Mr. Topsparkle saw her in the zenith of her audacious
charms. He met her at a masquerade at Bath, followed and
intrigued with her all the evening, and at last, alone in an alcove
with her after supper, induced her to take off her mask. Her
beauty dazzled those experienced eyes of his, and he fell madly
in love with her at first sight of that radiant loveliness: starriest
eyes of violet hue, a dainty little Greek nose, a complexion of
lilies and blush-roses, and the most perfect mouth and teeth in
Christendom. No one had ever seen anything more beautiful
than the tender curves of those classic lips, or more delicate
than their faint carmine tinge. In an epoch when almost every
woman of fashion plastered herself with bismuth and ceruse,
Lord Bramber's daughter could afford to exhibit the complexion
nature had given her, and might defy paint to match it. Lady
Judith laughed at her conquest when she was told about it by
half a dozen different admirers at the Rooms next morning.
"What, that Topsparkle man! " she exclaimed-"the traveled
Cit who has been exploring all sorts of savage places in Spain
and Italy, and writing would-be witty letters about his travels.
They say he is richer than any nabob in Hindostan. Yes, I
plagued him vastly, I believe, before I consented to unmask;
and then he pretended to be dumbfounded at my charms, for-
sooth; dazzled by this sun into which you gentlemen look with-
out flinching, like young eagles. "
"My dear Lady Judith, the man is captivated—your slave
forever. You had better put a ring in his nose and lead him
about with you, instead of that little black boy for whom you
sighed the other day, and that his Lordship denied you. He is
quite the richest man in London, three or four times a million-
aire, and he is on the point of buying Lord Ringwood's place in
Hampshirea genuine mediæval abbey, with half a mile of
cloisters and a fish-pond in the kitchen. "
"I care neither for cloisters nor kitchen. "
"Ay, but you have a weakness for diamonds," urged Mr.
Mordaunt, an old admirer, who was very much au courant as to
the fair Judith's history and habits, had lent her money when
she was losing at basset, and had diplomatized with her creditors.
for her. "Witness that cross the Jew sold you the other day. "


## p. 2295 (#493) ###########################################

MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
2295
Lady Judith reddened angrily. The same Jew dealer who
sold her the jewel had insisted upon having it back from her
when he discovered her inability to pay for it, threatening to
prosecute her for obtaining goods under false pretenses.
"Mr. Topsparkle's diamonds-they belonged to his mother-
are historical. His maternal grandfather was an Amsterdam Jew,
and the greatest diamond merchant of his time. He had mills
where the gems were ground as corn is ground in our country,
and seem to have been as plentiful as corn. Egad, Lady Judith,
how you would blaze in the Topsparkle diamonds! "
"Mr. Topsparkle must be sixty years of age! " exclaimed the
lady, with sovereign contempt.
"Nobody supposes you would marry him for his youth or his
personal attractions. Yet he is by no means a bad-looking man,
and he has had plenty of adventures in his day, I can assure
your Ladyship. Il a vécu, as our neighbors say: Topsparkle is no
simpleton. When he set out upon the grand tour nearly forty
years ago, he carried with him about as scandalous a reputation
as a gentleman of fashion could enjoy. He had been cut by all
the strait-laced people; and it is only the fact of his incalculable
wealth which has opened the doors of decent houses for him
since his return. "
"I thank you for the compliment implied in your recom-
mendation of him to me as a husband," said Lady Judith, draw-
ing herself up with that Juno-like air which made her seem half
a head taller, and which accentuated every curve of her superb
torso. "He is apparently a gentleman whom it would be a dis-
grace to know. "
“Oh, your Ladyship must be aware that a reformed rake
makes the best husband. And since Topsparkle went on the
Continent he has acquired a new reputation as a wit and a man
of letters. He wrote an Assyrian story in the Italian language,
about which the town raved a few years ago—a sort of demon
story, ever so much cleverer than Voltaire's fanciful novels.
Everybody was reading or pretending to read it. ”
"Oh, was that his? " exclaimed Judith, who read everything.
"It was mighty clever. I begin to think better of your Top-
sparkle personage. "
Five minutes afterwards, strolling languidly amid the crowd,
with a plain cousin at her elbow for foil and duenna, Lady Judith
met Mr. Topsparkle walking with no less a person than her
father.


## p. 2296 (#494) ###########################################

2296
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
Lord Bramber enjoyed the privilege of an antique hereditary
gout, and came to Bath every season for the waters. He was a
man of imposing figure, at once tall and bulky, but he carried
his vast proportions with dignity and ease. He was said to have
been the handsomest man of his day, and had been admired even
by an age which could boast of "Hervey the Handsome," John
Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, and the irresistible Henry St.
John. Basking in that broad sunshine of popularity which is the
portion of a man of high birth, graceful manners, and good looks,
Lord Bramber had squandered a handsome fortune right royally,
and now, at five-and-fifty, was as near insolvency as a gentleman
dare be. His house in Pulteney Street was a kind of haven, to
which he brought his family when London creditors began to be
implacable. He had even thoughts of emigrating to Holland or
Belgium, or to some old Roman town in the sunny South of
France, where he might live upon his wife's pin-money, which
happily was protected by stringent settlements and incorruptible
trustees.
He had married two out of three daughters well, but not brill-
iantly. Judith was the youngest of the three, and she was the
flower of the flock. She had been foolish, very foolish, about Lord
Lavendale, and a faint cloud of scandal had hung over her name
ever since her affair with that too notorious rake. Admirers she
had by the score, but since the Lavendale entanglement there
had been no serious advances from any suitor of mark.
But now Mr. Topsparkle, one of the wealthiest commoners in
Great Britain, was obviously smitten with Lady Judith's perfec-
tions, and had a keen air which seemed to mean business, Lord
Bramber thought. He had obtained an introduction to the earl
within the last half-hour, and had not concealed his admiration
for the earl's daughter. He had entreated the honor of a formal
introduction to the exquisite creature with whom he had con-
versed on sportive terms last night at the Assembly Rooms.
Lady Judith acknowledged the introduction with the air of a
queen to whom courtiers and compliments were as the gadflies
of summer. She fanned herself listlessly, and stared about her
while Mr. Topsparkle was talking.
"I vow, there is Mrs. Margetson," she exclaimed, recognizing
an acquaintance across the crowd: "I have not seen her for a
century. Heavens, how old and yellow she is looking-yellower
even than you, Mattie! " this last by way of aside to her plain
cousin.


## p. 2297 (#495) ###########################################

MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
2297
"I hope you bear me no malice for my pertinacity last night,
Lady Judith," murmured Topsparkle, insinuatingly.
'Malice, my good sir! I protest I never bear malice. To be
malicious, one's feelings must be engaged; and you would hardly
expect mine to be concerned in the mystifications of a dancing-
room. "
She looked over his head as she talked to him, still on the
watch for familiar faces among the crowd, smiling at one, bow-
ing at another. Mr. Topsparkle was savage at not being able to
engage her attention. At Venice, whence he had come lately,
all the women had courted him, hanging upon his words, adoring
him as the keenest wit of his day.
He was an attenuated and rather effeminate person, exqui-
sitely dressed and powdered, and not without a suspicion of rouge
upon his hollow cheeks or of Vandyke brown upon his delicately
penciled eyebrows. He, like Lord Bramber, presented the wreck
of manly beauty; but whereas Bramber suggested a three-master
of goodly bulk and tonnage, battered but still weather-proof and
seaworthy, Topsparkle had the air of a delicate pinnace which
time and tempest had worn to a mere phantasmal bark that the
first storm would scatter into ruin.
He had hardly the air of a gentleman, Judith thought, watch-
ing him keenly all the while she seemed to ignore his existence.
He was too fine, too highly trained for the genuine article; he
lacked that easy inborn grace of the man in whom good man-
ners are hereditary. There was nothing of the Cit about him;
but there was the exaggerated elegance, the exotic grace, of a
man who has too studiously cultivated the art of being a fine
gentleman; who has learned his manners in dubious paths, from
petites maîtresses and prime donne, rather than from statesmen
and princes.
On this, and on many a subsequent meeting, Lady Judith
was just uncivil enough to fan the flame of Vivian Topsparkle's
passion. He had begun in a somewhat philandering spirit, not
quite determined whether Lord Bramber's daughter were worthy
of him; but her hauteur made him her slave. Had she been
civil he would have given more account to those old stories
about Lavendale, and would have been inclined to draw back
before finally committing himself. But a woman who could
afford to be rude to the best match in England must needs be
above all suspicion. Had her reputation been seriously damaged


## p. 2298 (#496) ###########################################

2298
MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON
she would have caught at the chance of rehabilitating herself by
a rich marriage. Had she been civil to him Mr. Topsparkle
would have haggled and bargained about settlements; but his
ever-present fear of losing her made him accede to Lord Bram-
ber's exactions with a more than princely generosity, since but
few princes could afford to be so liberal. He had set his heart
upon having this woman for his wife-firstly, because she was
the handsomest and most fashionable woman in London, and
secondly, because so far as burnt-out embers can glow with new
fire, Mr. Topsparkle's battered old heart was aflame with a very
serious passion for this new deity.
So there was a grand wedding from the earl's house in Lei-
cester Fields; not a crowded assembly, for only the very élite of
the modish world were invited. The Duke, meaning his Grace
of York, honored the company with his royal presence, and there
were the great Sir Robert and a bevy of Cabinet ministers, and
Mr. Topsparkle felt that he had canceled any old half-forgotten
scandals as to his past life, and established himself in the high-
est social sphere by this alliance. As Vivian Topsparkle the
half-foreign eccentric, he was a man to be stared at and talked
about; but as the husband of Lord Bramber's daughter he had a
footing by right of alliance-in some of the noblest houses in
England. His name and reputation were hooked on to old
family trees; and those great people whose kinswoman he had
married could not afford to have him maligned or slighted. In
a word, Mr. Topsparkle felt that he had good value for his mag-
nificent settlements.
________
Was Lady Judith Topsparkle happy, with all her blessings?
She was gay; and with the polite world gayety ranks as happi-
ness, and commands the envy of the crowd. Nobody envies the
quiet matron whose domestic life flows onward with the placidity
of a sluggish stream. It is the butterfly queen of the hour
whom people admire and envy. Lady Judith, blazing in dia-
monds at a court ball, beautiful, daring, insolent, had half the
town for her slaves and courtiers. Even women flattered and
fawned upon her, delighted to be acknowledged as her ac-
quaintance, proud to be invited to her parties or to dance
attendance upon her in public assemblies.
T


## p. 2299 (#497) ###########################################

2299
GEORG BRANDES
(1842-)
BY WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE
HE man of letters who devotes himself chiefly or wholly to
criticism is an essentially modern type. Although the criti-
G. C. e cal art has been practiced in all literary periods, it has not
until the present century enlisted anything like the exclusive atten-
tion of writers of the highest order of attainment, but has rather
played a subordinate part beside the constructive or creative work to
the performance of which such men have given their best energies.
com-
In the case of some writers, such as Voltaire and Samuel Johnson,
we recognize the critical spirit that informs
the bulk of their work, yet are
pelled on the whole to classify them as
poets, or historians, or philosophers. Even
Coleridge, who wrote no inconsiderable
amount of the best literary criticism in
existence, is chiefly remembered as a poet;
even Lessing, one of the fountain-heads of
authoritative critical doctrine, owes to his
plays the major part of his great reputa-
tion. As for such men as Ben Jonson and
Dryden, Lamb and Shelley, Goethe and
Heine, their critical utterances, precious
and profound as they frequently are, figure
but incidentally among their writings, and
we read these men mainly for other reasons than that of learning
their opinions about other people's productions. For examples of the
man of letters considered primarily as critic, we must then look to
our own century, and we find the type best illustrated by such men
as Sainte-Beuve, Taine, Brunetière, and the subject of the present
sketch.

GEORG BRANDES
It is indeed a rather remarkable fact that the most conspicuous
figure in literary Denmark at the present time should be not a poet
or a novelist, but a critic pure and simple; for that is the title which
must be given to Georg Brandes. Not only is his attitude con-
sistently critical throughout the long series of his writings, but his
form and matter are also avowedly critical; so much so that hardly
one of his score or more of published volumes calls for classification


## p. 2300 (#498) ###########################################

GEORG BRANDES
2300
in any other than the critical category. Even when he takes us with
him upon his travels to France or Russia with the best intentions
in the world as to the avoidance of "shop,” he finds himself in the
end talking about the literature and the politics of those countries.
One of his latest books, Udenlandske Egne og Personligheder'
(Foreign Parts and Personalities) has a preface with the following
opening paragraph:—
"One gets tired of talking about books all the time. Even the man whose
business it is to express himself in black and white has eyes like other peo-
ple, and with them he perceives and observes the variegated visible world:
its landscapes, cities, plain and cultivated men, plastic art. For him too
does Nature exist; he too is moved at sight of such simple happenings as the
fall of the leaves in October; he too is stirred as he gazes upon a waterfall,
a mountain region, a sunlit glacier, a Dutch lake, and an Italian olive grove.
He too has been in Arcadia. »
Yet half the contents of the volume thus introduced must be de-
scribed as the work of the critic. Not only are the set papers upon
such men as Taine, Renan, and Maupassant deliberate critical studies,
but the sketches of travel likewise are sure to get around to the art
and literature of the countries visited.
The life of criticism, in the larger sense, comes from wide obser-
vation and a cultivation of the cosmopolitan spirit. And it must be
said of Brandes that he is a critic in this large sense, that he has
taken for his province the modern spirit in all its varied manifesta-
tions. The very title of his chief work-Main Currents in the Lit-
erature of the Nineteenth Century'-shows him to be concerned
with the broad movements of thought rather than with matters of
narrow technique or the literary activity of any one country- least
of all his own. It was peculiarly fortunate for Denmark that a critic
of this type should have arisen within her borders a quarter-century
ago. The Scandinavian countries lie so far apart from the chief
centres of European thought that they are always in danger of laps-
ing into a narrow self-sufficiency so far as intellectual ideals are con-
cerned. Danish literature has been made what it is chiefly by the
mediation of a few powerful minds who have kept it in touch with
modern progress: by Holberg, who may almost be said to have
brought humanism into Denmark; by Oehlenschläger, who made the
romantic movement as powerful an influence in Denmark as it was
in Germany; by Brandes, who, beginning his career just after the
war in which Denmark lost her provinces and became as embittered
toward Germany as France was to become a few years later, strove
to prevent the political breach from extending into the intellectual
sphere, and helped his fellow-countrymen to understand that thought


## p. 2301 (#499) ###########################################

GEORG BRANDES
2301
and progress are one and have a common aim, although nations may
be many and antagonistic. There is much significance in the fact
that the name of 'Emigrant Literature' is given to the first section
of his greatest work. He thus styles the French literature of a cen-
tury ago, the work of such writers as Chateaubriand, Senancour,
Constant, and Madame de Staël,- because it received a vivifying im-
pulse from the emigration, —from the contact, forced or voluntary,
of the French mind with the ideals of German and English civiliza-
tion. It has been the chief function of Brandes, during the whole
of his brilliant career, to supply points of contact between the intel-
lectual life of Denmark and that of the rest of Europe, to bring his
own country into the federal republic of letters.
A glance at the course of his life, and at the subjects of his
books, will serve to outline the nature of the work to which his
energies have been devoted. A Jew by race, Georg Morris Cohen
Brandes was born February 4th, 1842. He went through his aca-
demic training with brilliant success, studied law for a brief period,
and then drifted into journalism and literature. A long visit to Paris
(1866-7) gave him breadth of view and the materials for his first
books, Esthetiske Studier' (Esthetic Studies), 'Den Franske Æs-
thetik' (French Esthetics), and a volume of 'Kritiker og Portraiter'
(Criticisms and Portraits).
A later visit to foreign parts (1870-1) brought him into contact
with Taine, Renan, and Mill, all of whom influenced him profoundly.
In 1871 he began to lecture on literary subjects, chiefly in Copen-
hagen, and out of these lectures grew his 'Hovedströmninger i det
Nittende Aarhundredes Litteratur' (Main Currents in the Literature
of the Nineteenth Century), a work that in the course of about ten
years extended to six volumes, and must be considered not only the
author's capital critical achievement, but also one of the greatest
works of literary history and criticism that the nineteenth century
has produced. The division of the subject is as follows:
grant Literature'; 2. The Romantic School in Germany'; 3. 'The
Reaction in France'; 4. 'Naturalism in England'; 5. The Romantic
School in France'; 6. Young Germany. '
1. 'Emi-
In spite of the growing fame that came to him from these mas-
terly studies, Brandes felt the need of a larger audience than the
Scandinavian countries could offer him, and in 1877 changed his resi-
dence from Copenhagen to Berlin, a step to which he was in part
urged by the violent antagonism engendered at home by the radical
and uncompromising character of many of his utterances. It was not
until 1883 that he again took up residence in his own country, upon
a guarantee of four thousand kroner (about $1000) annually for ten
years, secured by some of his friends, the condition being that he
-
-:


## p. 2302 (#500) ###########################################

2302
GEORG BRANDES
should give courses of public lectures in Copenhagen during that
period.
Among the works not yet named, mention should be made of his
volumes upon Holberg, Tegnér, Kierkegaard, Ferdinand Lassalle, and
the Earl of Beaconsfield. These brilliant monographs are remarkable
for their insight into the diverse types of character with which they
deal, for their breadth of view, felicity of phrase, and originality
of treatment. There are also several collections of miscellaneous
essays, with such titles as 'Danske Digtere' (Danish Poets), 'Danske
Personligheder' (Danish Personalities), Det Moderne Gjennembruds
Mænd' (Men of the Modern Awakening), and 'Udenlandske Egne
og Personligheder' (Foreign Parts and Personalities). The latest pub-
lication of Brandes is a careful study of Shakespeare, a work of
remarkable vigor, freshness, and sympathy.
As a critic, Brandes belongs distinctly to the class of those who
speak with authority, and has little in common with the writers who
are content to explore the recesses of their own subjectivity, and re-
cord their personal impressions of literature. Criticism is for him a
matter of science, not of opinion, and he holds it subject to a defin-
ite method and body of principles. A few sentences from the second
volume of his 'Hovedströmninger' will illustrate what he conceives
that method to be:-
-
"First and foremost, I endeavor everywhere to bring literature back to
life. You will already have observed that while the older controversies in
our literature—for example, that between Heiberg and Hauch, and even the
famous controversy between Baggesen and Oehlenschläger- have been main-
tained in an exclusively literary domain and have become disputes about
literary principles alone, the controversy aroused by my lectures, not merely
by reason of the misapprehension of the opposition, but quite as much by rea-
son of the very nature of my writing, has come to touch upon a swarm of
religious, social, and moral problems. . . It follows from my conception
of the relation of literature to life that the history of literature I teach is not
a history of literature for the drawing-room. I seize hold of actual life with
all the strength I may, and show how the feelings that find their expression
in literature spring up in the human heart. Now the human heart is no
stagnant pool or idyllic woodland lake. It is an ocean with submarine vege-
tation and frightful inhabitants. The literary history and the poetry of the
drawing-room see in the life of man a salon, a decorated ball-room, the men
and the furnishings polished alike, in which no dark corners escape illumina-
tion. Let him who will, look at matters from this point of view; but it is no
affair of mine. »
The boldness and even the ruthlessness which characterize much
of the author's work were plainly foreshadowed in this outspoken in-
troduction; and he has grown more rather than less uncompromising


## p. 2303 (#501) ###########################################

GEORG BRANDES
2303
during the quarter-century that has elapsed since they were spoken.
Matthew Arnold would have applauded the envisagement of litera-
ture as "criticism of life," but would have deplored the sacrifice of
sweetness to gain increased intensity of light. Brandes came back
from contact with the European world full of enthusiasm for the
new men and the new ideas,- for Comte and Taine, for Renan and
Mill and Spencer, and wanted his recalcitrant fellow-countrymen
to accept them all at once. They were naturally taken aback by
so imperious a demand, and their opposition created the atmosphere
of controversy in which Brandes has ever since for the most part
lived-with slight effort to soften its asperities, but, it must be
added, with the ever-increasing respect of those not of his own way
of thinking. On the whole, his work has been healthful and stim-
ulating; it has stirred the sluggish to a renewed mental activity, and
has made its author himself one of the most conspicuous figures of
what he calls "det Moderne Gjennembrud »- the Modern Awakening.
Estalage
-
BJÖRNSON
From 'Eminent Authors of the Nineteenth Century: Translated by Professor
Rasmus B. Anderson
I
T is only necessary to bestow a single glance upon Björnson to
be convinced how admirably he is equipped by nature for
the hot strife a literary career brings with it in most lands,
and especially in the combat-loving North. Shoulders as broad
as his are not often seen, nor do we often behold so vigorous a
form, one that seems as though created to be chiseled in granite.
There is perhaps no labor that so completely excites all the
vital forces, exhausts the nerves, refines and enervates the feel-
ings, as that of literary production. There has never been the
slightest danger, however, that the exertions of Björnson's poetic
productiveness would affect his lungs as in the case of Schiller,
or his spine as in the case of Heine; there has been no cause
to fear that inimical articles in the public journals would ever
give him his death-blow, as they did Halvdan, the hero of his
drama 'Redaktören (The Editor); or that he would yield, as
so many modern poets have yielded, to the temptation of resort-
ing to pernicious stimulants or to dissipation as antidotes for the


## p. 2304 (#502) ###########################################

GEORG BRANDES
2304
overwrought or depleted state of the nervous system occasioned
by creative activity. Nothing has injured Björnson's spine; his
lungs are without blemish; a cough is unknown to him; and his
shoulders were fashioned to bear without discomposure the rude
thrusts which the world gives, and to return them.
He is per-
haps the only important writer of our day of whom this may be
said. As an author he is never nervous, not when he displays
his greatest delicacy, not even when he evinces his most marked
sensibility.
Strong as the beast of prey whose name [Björn=Bear] occurs
twice in his; muscular, without the slightest trace of corpulence,
of athletic build, he looms up majestically in my mind, with his
massive head, his firmly compressed lips, and his sharp, penetrat-
ing gaze from behind his spectacles. It would be impossible for
literary hostilities to overthrow this man, and for him there never
existed that greatest danger to authors (a danger which for a long
time menaced his great rival Henrik Ibsen), namely, that of hav-
ing his name shrouded in silence. Even as a very young author,
as a theatrical critic and political writer, he had entered the field
of literature with such an eagerness for combat that a rumbling
noise arose about him wherever he appeared. Like his own
Thorbjörn in Synnöve Solbakken,' he displayed in early youth
the combative tendency of the athlete; but like his Sigurd in
Sigurd Slembe,' he fought not merely to practice his strength,
but from genuine though often mistaken love of truth and just-
ice. At all events, he understood thoroughly who to attract
attention.
An author may possess great and rare gifts, and yet, through
lack of harmony between his own personal endowments and the
national characteristics or the degree of development of his peo-
ple, may long be prevented from attaining a brilliant success.
Many of the world's greatest minds have suffered from this
cause. Many, like Byron, Heine, and Henrik Ibsen, have left
their native land; many more who have remained at home have
felt forsaken by their compatriots. With Björnson the case is
quite different.
He has never, it is true, been peacefully recog
nized by the entire Norwegian people; at first, because the form
he used was too new and unfamiliar; later, because his ideas
were of too challenging a nature for the ruling, conservative, and
highly orthodox circles of the land; even at the present time he
is pursued by the press of the Norwegian government and by


## p. 2305 (#503) ###########################################

GEORG BRANDES
2305
the leading official society with a fury which is as little choice
in its selection of means as the bitterness which pursues the
champions of thrones and altars in other countries. In spite of
all this, Björnstjerne Björnson has his people behind him and
about him as perhaps no other poet has, unless it be Victor
Hugo. When his name is mentioned it is equivalent to hoisting
the flag of Norway. In his noble qualities and in his faults, in
his genius and in his weak points, he as thoroughly bears the
stamp of Norway as Voltaire bore that of France. His boldness
and his naïveté, his open-heartedness as a man and the terseness
of his style as an artist, the highly wrought and sensitive Nor-
wegian popular sentiment, and the lively consciousness of the
one-sidedness and the intellectual needs of his fellow-countrymen
that has driven him to Scandinavianism, Pan-Teutonism, and cos-
mopolitanism-all this in its peculiar combination in him is so
markedly national that his personality may be said to offer a
résumé of the entire people.
None of his contemporaries so fully represent this people's
love of home and of freedom, its self-consciousness, rectitude,
and fresh energy.
Indeed, just now he also exemplifies on a
large scale the people's tendency to self-criticism; not that
scourging criticism which chastises with scorpions, and whose
representative in Norway is Ibsen, in Russia Turgénieff, but the
sharp bold expression of opinion begotten of love. He never
calls attention to an evil in whose improvement and cure he
does not believe, or to a vice which he despairs of seeing out-
rooted. For he has implicit faith in the good in humanity, and
possesses entire the invincible optimism of a large, genial, san-
guine nature.
As to his character, he is half chieftain, half poet. He unites
in his own person the two forms most prominent in ancient Nor-
way those of the warrior and of the scald. In his intellectual
constitution he is partly a tribune of the people, partly a lay
preacher; in other words, he combines in his public demeanor
the political and religious pathos of his Norwegian contempo-
raries, and this became far more apparent after he broke loose
from orthodoxy than it was before. Since his so-called apostasy
he has in fact been a missionary and a reformer to a greater
degree than ever.
He could have been the product of no other land than Nor-
way, and far less than other authors could he thrive in any but
IV-145


## p. 2306 (#504) ###########################################

2306
GEORG BRANDES
his native soil. In the year 1880, when the rumor spread
through the German press that Björnson, weary of continual
wrangling at home, was about to settle in Germany, he wrote to
me: "In Norway will I live, in Norway will I lash and be
lashed, in Norway will I sing and die. ”
To hold such intimate relations with one's fatherland is most
fortunate for a person who is sympathetically comprehended by
that fatherland. And this is the case with Björnson. It is a
matter dependent on conditions deeply rooted in his nature. He
who cherishes so profound an enthusiasm for the reserved, soli-
tary Michelangelo, and who feels constrained, as a matter of
course, to place him above Raphael, is himself a man of a totally
different temperament: one who is never lonely, even when
most alone (as he has been since 1873 on his gård in remote
Gausdal), but who is social to the core, or, more strictly speak-
ing, a thoroughly national character. He admires Michelangelo
because he reveres and understands the elements of greatness, of
profound earnestness, of mighty ruggedness in the human heart
and in style; but he has nothing in common with the great Flor-
entine's melancholy sense of isolation. He was born to be the
founder of a party, and was therefore early attracted to enthusi-
astic and popular party leaders, such as the Dane Grundtvig and
the Norwegian Wergeland, although wholly unlike either in his
plastic, creative power. He is a man who needs to feel himself
the centre, or rather the focus of sympathy, and insensibly he
forms a circle about him, because his own nature is the résumé
of a social union.
-
Copyrighted by T. Y. Crowell and Company, New York.
THE HISTORICAL MOVEMENT IN MODERN LITERATURE
From the Introduction to Main Currents in the Literature of the Nineteenth
Century›
W
HAT I shall portray for you is a historical movement, having
very completely the form and the character of a drama.
The six distinct literary groups that I intend to present
to you are entirely like the six acts of a great play. In the first
group, the French emigrant-literature inspired by Rousseau, the
reaction has already begun, but the reactionary currents are
everywhere blended with the revolutionary. In the second group,


## p. 2307 (#505) ###########################################

GEORG BRANDES
2307
the half-Catholic romantic school of Germany, the reaction is
growing; it goes further, and holds itself more aloof from the
contemporary movement towards freedom and progress. The
third group, finally, formed of such writers as Joseph de Maistre,
Lamennais in his orthodox period, Lamartine and Victor Hugo
under the Restoration, when they were still firm supporters of
the legitimist and clerical parties, stands for the reaction, impetu-
ous and triumphant.
Byron and his associates make up the fourth group. This
one man reverses the action of the great drama. The Greek
war of liberation breaks out, a current of fresh air sweeps over
Europe, Byron falls as a hero of the Greek cause, and his heroic
death makes a deep impression upon all the writers of the Con-
tinent. Just before the July Revolution all the great French
writers turn about, forming the fifth group, the French romantic
school, and the new liberal movement is marked by the names
of Lamennais, Hugo, Lamartine, De Musset, George Sand, and
many others.
And when the movement spreads from France
into Germany, liberal ideas triumph in that land also, and the
sixth and last group of authors I shall portray became inspired
by the ideas of the July Revolution and the War of Liberation,
seeing, like the French poets, in Byron's great shade the leader
of the movement towards freedom. The most important of these
young writers are of Jewish origin, as Heine, Börne, and later,
Auerbach.
I believe that from this great drama we may get a lesson for
our own instruction. We are now, as usual, forty years behind
the rest of Europe. In the literatures of those great countries
the revolutionary stream long ago united with its tributaries,
burst the dikes that were set to impede its course, and has been
distributed into thousands of channels. We are still endeavoring
to check it and hold it dammed up in the swamps of the reac-
tion, but we have succeeded only in checking our literature itself.
It would hardly be difficult to secure unanimous consent to
the proposition that Danish literature has at no time during the
present century found itself languishing as in our own days.
Poetical production is almost completely checked, and no problem
of a general human or social character awakens interest or evokes
any more serious discussion than that of the daily press or other
ephemeral publication. Our productivity has never been strongly
original, and we now utterly fail to appropriate the spiritual life


## p. 2308 (#506) ###########################################

2308
GEORG BRANDES
of other lands, and our spiritual deafness has brought upon us
the speechlessness of the deaf-mutes.
The proof that a literature in our days is alive is to be
found in the fact that it brings problems up for debate. Thus
George Sand brings marriage up for debate, Voltaire, Byron, and
Feuerbach religion, Proudhon property, Alexander Dumas fils
the relations of the sexes, and Émile Augier social relations in
general. For a literature to bring nothing up for debate is the
same thing as to lose all its significance. The people that pro-
duce such a literature may believe as firmly as they please that
the salvation of the world will come from it, but their expecta-
tions will be doomed to disappointment; such a people can no
more influence the development of civilization in the direction of
progress than did the fly who thought he was urging the car-
riage onward by now and then giving the four horses an insig-
nificant prick.
-
Many virtues as for example warlike courage
- may be
preserved in such a society, but these virtues cannot sustain
literature when intellectual courage has sunk and disappeared.
All stagnant reaction is tyrannical; and when a community has
by degrees so developed itself that it wears the features of
tyranny beneath the mask of freedom, when every outspoken
utterance that gives uncompromising expression to free thought
is frowned upon by society, by the respectable part of the press,
and by many officials of the State, very unusual conditions will
be needed to call forth characters and talents of the sort upon
which progress in any society depends. Should such a commu-
nity develop a kind of poetry, we need not wonder overmuch
if its essential tendency be to scorn the age and put it to
shame. Such poetry will again and again describe the men of
the time as wretches; and it may well happen that the books
which are the most famous and the most sought after (Ibsen's
'Brand,' for example) will be those in which the reader is made
to feel at first with a sort of horror, and afterwards with a
sort of satisfaction - what a worm he is, how miserable and how
cowardly. It may happen, too, that for such a people the word
Will becomes a sort of catchword, that it may cry aloud with
dramas of the Will and philosophies of the Will. Men demand
that which they do not possess; they call for that of which they
most bitterly feel the lack; they call for that which there is the
keenest inquiry for. Yet one would be mistaken were he


## p. 2309 (#507) ###########################################

GEORG BRANDES
2309
pessimistically to assume that in such a people there is less
courage, resolution, enthusiasm, and will than in the average of
others. There is quite as much courage and freedom of thought,
but still more is needed. For when the reaction in a literature
forces the new ideas into the background, and when a commu-
nity has daily heard itself blamed, derided, and even cursed for
its hypocrisy and its conventionality, yet has remained convinced
of its openness of mind, daily swinging censers before its own.
nostrils in praise thereof,—it requires unusual ability and un-
usual force of will to bring new blood into its literature. A
soldier needs no uncommon courage to fire upon the enemy
from the shelter of an earthwork; but if he has been led so ill
that he finds no shelter at hand, we need not wonder if his
courage forsakes him.
Various causes have contributed to the result that our litera-
ture has accomplished less than the greater ones in the service
of progress.
The very circumstances that have favored the
development of our poetry have stood in our way. I may in the
first place mention a certain childishness in the character of our
people. We owe to this quality the almost unique naïveté of our
poetry. Naïveté is an eminently poetical quality, and we find it
in nearly all of our poets, from Oehlenschläger through Ingemann
and Andersen to Hostrup. But naïveté does not imply the
revolutionary propensity. I may further mention the abstract
idealism so strongly marked in our literature. It deals with our
dreams, not with our life.
It sometimes happens to the Dane on his travels that a for-
eigner, after some desultory talk about Denmark, asks him this
question: How may one learn what are the aspirations of your
country? Has your contemporary literature developed any type
that is palpable and easily grasped? The Dane is embarrassed
in his reply. They all know of what class were the types that
the eighteenth century bequeathed to the nineteenth. Let us name
one or two representative types in the case of a single country,
Germany. There is 'Nathan the Wise,' the ideal of the period
of enlightenment; that is, the period of tolerance, noble humanity,
and thorough-going rationalism. We can hardly say that we have
held fast to this ideal or carried it on to further development,
as it was carried on by Schleiermacher and many others in Ger-
many. Mynster was our Schleiermacher, and we know how far
his orthodoxy stands removed from Schleiermacher's liberalism.
Instead of adopting rationalism and carrying it on, we have
•


## p. 2310 (#508) ###########################################

2310
GEORG BRANDES
stepped farther and farther away from it. Clausen was once
its advocate, but he is so no more. Heiberg is followed by
Martensen, and Martensen's 'Speculative Dogmatic' is succeeded
by his Christian Dogmatic. ' In Oehlenschläger's poetry there
is still the breath of rationalism, but the generation of Oehlen-
schläger and Örsted is followed by that of Kierkegaard and
Paludan-Müller.
The German literature of the eighteenth century bequeathed
to us many other poetic ideals. There is Werther, the ideal of
the "storm and stress" period, of the struggle of nature and
passion with the customary order of society; then there is Faust,
the very spirit of the new age with its new knowledge, who,
still unsatisfied with what the period of enlightenment has won,
foresees a higher truth, a higher happiness, and a thousandfold
higher power; and there is Wilhelm Meister, the type of human-
ized culture, who goes through the school of life and from ap-
prentice becomes master, who begins with the pursuit of ideals
that soar above life and who ends by discerning the ideal in the
real, for whom these two expressions finally melt into one.
There is Goethe's Prometheus, who, chained to his rock, gives
utterance to the philosophy of Spinoza in the sublime rhythms
of enthusiasm. Last of all, there is the Marquis von Posa, the
true incarnation of the revolution, the apostle and prophet of
liberty, the type of a generation that would, by means of the
uprising against all condemned traditions, make progress possible
and bring happiness to mankind.
With such types in the past our Danish literature begins.
Does it develop them further? We may not say that it does.
For what is the test of progress? It is what happens after-
ward. It has not been printed in this shape, but I will tell you
about it. One fine day, when Werther was going about as usual,
dreaming despairingly of Lotte, it occurred to him that the bond
between her and Albert was of slight consequence, and he won
her from Albert. One fine day the Marquis von Posa wearied of
preaching freedom to deaf ears at the court of Philip the Second,
and drove a sword through the king's body-and Prometheus
rose from his rock and overthrew Olympus, and Faust, who had
knelt abjectly before the Earth-Spirit, took possession of his
earth, and subdued it by means of steam, and electricity, and
methodical investigation.
Translation of W. M. Payne.


## p. 2311 (#509) ###########################################

2311
SEBASTIAN BRANDT
(1458-1521)
N 1494, shortly after the invention of printing, there appeared
in Basle a book entitled 'Das Narrenschiff' (The Ship of
Fools). Its success was most extraordinary; it was immedi-
ately translated into various languages, and remained favorite with
the reading world throughout the sixteenth century. The secret of its
popularity lay in its mixture of satire and allegory, which was exactly
in accord with the spirit of the age. The Ship of Fools' was not
only read by the cultivated classes who could appreciate the subtle
flavor of the work, but-especially in Ger-
many-it was a book for the people, rel-
ished by burgher and artisan as well as by
courtier and scholar. Contemporary works
contain many allusions to it; it was in
fact so familiar to every one that monks
preached upon texts drawn from it. This
unique and powerful book carried the spirit
of the Reformation where the words of
Luther would have been unheeded, and it
is supposed to have suggested to Erasmus
his famous 'Praise of Folly. '
SEBASTIAN BRANDT
In its way, it was as important a pro-
duction as Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. '
The Narrenschiff' was like a glass in which every man saw the
reflection of his neighbor; for the old weather-beaten vessel was filled
with a crew of fools, who impersonate the universal weaknesses of
human nature. In his prologue Brandt says:—

"We well may call it Folly's mirror,
Since every fool there sees his error:
His proper worth would each man know,
The glass of Fools the truth will show.
Who meets his image on the page
May learn to deem himself no sage,
Nor shrink his nothingness to see,
Since naught that lives from fault is free;
And who in conscience dare be sworn
That cap and bells he ne'er hath worn?
He who his foolishness decries
Alone deserves to rank as wise.


## p. 2312 (#510) ###########################################

SEBASTIAN BRANDT
2312
He who doth wisdom's airs rehearse
May stand godfather to my verse!
"For jest and earnest, use and sport,
Here fools abound, of every sort.
The sage may here find Wisdom's rules,
And Folly learn the ways of fools.
Dolts rich and poor my verse doth strike;
The bad finds badness, like finds like;
A cap on many a one I fit
Who fain to wear it would omit.
Were I to mention it by name,
I know you not,' he would exclaim. "
Sebastian Brandt represented all that was best in mediæval Ger-
many. He was a man of affairs, a diplomat, a scholar, an artist, and
a citizen highly esteemed and reverenced for his judgment and
knowledge. Naturally enough, he held important civic offices in
Basle as well as in Strassburg, where he was born in 1458. His
father, a wealthy burgher, sent him to the University of Basle to
study philosophy and jurisprudence and to become filled with the
political ideals of the day. He took his degree in law in 1484 at
Basle, and practiced his profession, gaining in reputation every
day.
In early youth he dedicated a number of works in prose and verse
to the Emperor Maximilian, who made him Chancellor of the Empire,
and frequently summoned him to his camp to take part in the nego-
tiations regarding the Holy See. He was universally admired, and
Erasmus, who saw him in Strassburg, spoke of him as the "incom-
parable Brandt. " His portrait represents the polished Italian rather
than the sturdy middle-class German citizen. His features are deli-
cately cut, his nose long and thin, his face smooth, and his fur-
bordered cap and brocade robes suggest aristocratic surroundings.
No doubt he graced, by his appearance and bearing as well as by
his richly stored mind, the dignity of Count Palatine, to which rank
the Emperor raised him. He died in Strassburg in 1521, and lies in
the great cathedral.
In addition to the pictures in the Ship of Fools' (some of which
he drew, while others he designed and superintended), he illustrated
"Terence' (1496); the Quadragesimale, or Sermons on the Prodigal
Son' (1495); 'Boëtius' (1501), and Virgil' (1502), all of which are
interesting to the artist and engraver. In the original edition of
the 'Ship of Fools,' written in the Swabian dialect, every folly is
accompanied with marginal notes giving the classical or Biblical pro-
totype of the person satirized.


## p. 2313 (#511) ###########################################

SEBASTIAN BRANDT
2313
"Brandt's satires," says Max Müller in his 'Chips from a German Work-
shop,' “are not very powerful, nor pungent, nor original. But his style is
free and easy.
He writes in short chapters, and mixes his fools in such a
manner that we always meet with a variety of new faces. To account for
his popularity we must remember the time in which he wrote. What had the
poor people of Germany to read toward the end of the fifteenth century?
Printing had been invented, and books were published and sold with great
rapidity. People were not only fond, but proud, of reading. This entertain-
ment was fashionable, and the first fool who enters Brandt's ship is the man
who buys books. But what were the wares that were offered for sale? We
find among the early prints of the fifteenth century religious, theological, and
classical works in great abundance, and we know that the respectable and
wealthy burghers of Augsburg and Strassburg were proud to fill their shelves
with these portly volumes. But then German aldermen had wives and
daughters and sons, and what were they to read during the long winter
evenings?
There was room therefore at that time for a work like the
(Ship of Fools. > It was the first printed book that treated of contemporary
events and living persons, instead of old German battles and French knights.
"People are always fond of reading the history of their own times. If the
good qualities of the age are brought out, they think of themselves or their
friends; if the dark features of their contemporaries are exhibited, they think
of their neighbors and enemies. The Ship of Fools) is the sort of satire
which ordinary people would read, and read with pleasure. They might feel
a slight twinge now and then, but they would put down the book at the end,
and thank God that they were not like other men. There is a chapter on
Misers,- and who would not gladly give a penny to a beggar? There is a
chapter on Gluttony,—and who was ever more than a little exhilarated after
dinner? There is a chapter on Church-goers,- and who ever went to church
for respectability's sake, or to show off a gaudy dress, or a fine dog, or a
new hawk? There is a chapter on Dancing,- and who ever danced except
for the sake of exercise?
We sometimes wish that Brandt's satire
had been a little more searching, and that, instead of his many allusions to
classical fools,
he had given us a little more of the scandalous gossip
of his own time. But he was too good a man to do this, and his contempɔ-
raries no doubt were grateful to him for his forbearance. »
•
•
From a line in his poem saying that the Narrenschiff was to be
found in the neighborhood of Aix, it is supposed that Brandt received
his idea from an old chronicle which describes a ship built near Aix-
la-Chapelle in the twelfth century, and which was borne through
the country as the centre-piece for a carnival, and followed by a
suite of men and women dressed in gay costume, singing and dan-
cing to the sound of instruments. The old monk calls it "pagan
worship," and denounces it severely; but Brandt saw great possibili-
ties in it for pointing a moral, according to the fashion of his time.
The illustrations contributed not a little to the popularity of the
book, for he put all his humor into the pictures and all his sermons
and exhortations into his text.


## p. 2314 (#512) ###########################################

2314
SEBASTIAN BRANDT
Just as Brandt in his literary qualities has been compared to
Rabelais, so his satirical pencil has been likened to Hogarth's. Bold-
ness, drollery, dramatic spirit, force, and spontaneous satire charac-
terize both artists. He does not mount a pulpit and speak to the
erring masses with sanctimonious self-righteousness; but he enters
the Ship himself to lead the babbling folk in motley to the land of
wisdom. His own folly is that of the student, and he therefore
begins caricaturing himself.
To open the Ship of Fools' is to witness a masquerade of the
fifteenth century. The frontispiece shows a large galley with high
poop and prow and disordered rigging. Confusion reigns. Every one
wears the livery of Folly, the fantastic hood with two peaks like
asses' ears, and decorated with tiny jingling bells. One man on the
prow gesticulates wildly to a little boat, and cries to the passengers,
"Zu schyff, zu schyff, brüder: ess gat, ess gat! " (On board, on
board, brothers; it goes, it goes! )
>>
In these pages every type of society is seen, "from beardless
youth to crooked age, as the author asserts. Men and women of all
classes and conditions, high and low, rich and poor, learned and
unlearned; ladies in long trains and furred gowns; knights with long
peaked shoes, carrying falcons upon their wrists; cooks and butlers
busy in the kitchen; women gazing into mirrors; monks preaching
in pulpits; merchants selling goods; gluttons at the table; drunkards
in the tavern; alchemists in their laboratories; gamesters playing
cards and rattling dice; lovers in shady groves-all and each wear
Folly's cap and bells.
Another class of fools is seen engaged in ridiculous occupations,
such as pouring water into wells; bearing the world on their shoulders;
measuring the globe; or weighing heaven and earth in the balance.
Still others despoil their fellows. Wine merchants introducing salt-
petre, bones, mustard, and sulphur into barrels, the horse-dealer
padding the foot of a lame horse, men selling inferior skins for good
fur, and other cheats with false weights, short measure, and light
money, prove that the vices of the modern age are not novelties.
Other allegorical pictures and verses describe the mutability of fortune,
where a wheel, guided by a gigantic hand outstretched from the sky,
is adorned with three asses, wearing of course the cap and bells.
The best German editions of this book are by Zarncke (Leipsic,
1854), and Goedecke (1872). It was translated into Latin by Locker
in 1497, into English by Henry Watson as 'The Grete Shyppe of
Fooles of the Worlde' (1517); and by Alexander Barclay in 1509.
The best edition of Barclay's adaptation, from which the extracts
below are drawn, was published by T. H. Jamieson (Edinburgh, 1874).


## p. 2315 (#513) ###########################################

SEBASTIAN BRANDT
2315
* Floats.
§ Single.
THE UNIVERSAL SHYP
CO
OME to, Companyons: ren: tyme it is to rowe:
Our Carake fletis*: the se is large and wyde
And depe Inough: a pleasaunt wynde doth blowe.
Prolonge no tyme, our Carake doth you byde,
Our felawes tary for you on every syde.
Hast hyther, I say, ye folyst naturall,
Howe oft shall I you unto my Navy call?
Ye have one confort, ye shall nat be alone:
Your company almoste is infynyte;
For nowe alyve ar men but fewe or none
That of my shyp can red hym selfe out quyte. ‡
A fole in felawes hath pleasour and delyte.
Here can none want, for our proclamacion
Extendyth farre: and to many a straunge nacyon.
Both yonge and olde, pore man, and estate:
The folysshe moder: hir doughter by hir syde,
Ren to our Navy, ferynge to come to[o] late.
No maner of degre is in the worlde wyde,
But that for all theyr statelynes and pryde
As many as from the way of wysdome tryp
Shall have a rowme and place within my shyp.
My folysshe felawes therfore I you exort
Hast to our Navy, for tyme it is to rowe:
Nowe must we leve eche sympyll§ haven and porte,
And sayle to that londe where folys abound and flow;
For whether we aryve at London or Bristowe,
Or any other Haven within this our londe,
We folys ynowe || shall fynde alway at honde.
Our frayle bodyes wandreth in care and payne
And lyke to botes troubled with tempest sore
From rocke to rocke cast in this se mundayne,
Before our iyen beholde we ever more
The deth of them that passed are before.
Alas mysfortune us causeth oft to rue
Whan to vayne thoughtis our bodyes we subdue.
We wander in more dout than mortall man can thynke,
And oft by our foly and wylfull neglygence
Quite rid himself of.
+ Fools.
Enough.


## p. 2316 (#514) ###########################################

2316
SEBASTIAN BRANDT
Our shyp is in great peryll for to synke.
So sore ar we overcharged with offence
We see the daunger before our owne presence
Of straytis, rockis, and bankis of sonde full hye,
Yet we procede to wylfull jeopardye.
We dyvers Monsters within the se beholde
Redy to abuse or to devour mankynde,
As Dolphyns, whallys, and wonders many folde,
And oft the Marmaydes songe dullyth our mynde
That to all goodnes we ar made dull and blynde;
The wolves of these oft do us moche care,
Yet we of them can never well beware.
About we wander in tempest and Tourment;
What place is sure, where Foles may remayne
And fyx theyr dwellynge sure and parmanent?