BEAGA
BBANDES
BRAGA, President Theophilo, Portu
guese poet and statesman, second President
of the Eepublicof Portugal. B. Feb. 24, 1843.
Ed. at his father s school in the Azores and
at Coimbra University. In early years he
was apprenticed to a printer, and at the
age of sixteen he published a volume of
verse. In 1861 he took up the study of
law at Coimbra, and graduated there in
1868. In 1872 he competed for and won
the chair of modern languages at the Cursu
Superior de Lettras, Lisbon University.
Dr. Braga, who became one of the most
distinguished and most prolific of modern
Portuguese writers, applied himself to
science and philosophy, as well as to
letters and history. His long epic, Vision
of the Ages (1864), and his History of
Portuguese Literature (32 vols.) are the
best known of the hundred works he has
written. He adopted Positivism, assisted
in editing Positivismo, and was the
Republican leader in the Cortes. After
the Eevolution he was, on Oct. 4, 1910,
made President of the Provisional Govern
ment, and in 1915 he had a short term of
office as second President of the Eepublic.
He is an ardent Eationalist, Pacifist, and
Humanitarian, and has taken an active
interest in the annual Freethought Con
gresses. He is a member of the Inter
national Freethought Federation.
BRAHMS, Johannes, Ph.D., German composer. B. May 7, 1833. Ed. by his father, a musician. Brahms was discovered by Schumann in 1853. In 1854 he became conductor for the Prince of Lippe-Detmold, in 1863 director of the Vienna Sing- akademie, and in 1871 director of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. His com positions were now of so high an order that Cambridge University offered him a degree in 1877 an offer which he ignored and Breslau University conferred on him a degree in philosophy. He received the Prussian order Pour le Merite in 1886. The magnificent German Requiem which he composed in 1868, in which he sub stitutes phrases from the German Bible
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for the phrases of the Latin liturgy, is
claimed by his more superficial biographers
to be an expression of deep personal reli
gious feeling, but his letters to his friend
Herzogenberg show that he was an Agnostic
to the end of his life (see Letters of J.
Brahms : the Herzogenberg Correspondence,
Eng. trans., 1909). The words of the first
of his Vier Ernste Gesange (1896), written
in the year before his death, are defiantly
sceptical about a future life, and in a letter
to Herzogenberg (June, 1896) he endorses
them. These Songs are his " supreme
achievement in dignified utterance of noble
thoughts " (Enc. Brit.}. D. Apr. 3, 1897.
BRAMWiELL, George William Wilshere, Baron Bramwell, judge. B. June 12, 1808. Ed. Enfield Palace School. He was employed in his father s bank, but in 1830 he took up the study of law. He was called to the Bar in 1838, and became a Queen s Counsel in 1851. In 1856 he became a judge and was knighted, proving one of the strongest judges that ever sat on the bench " (Diet. Nat. Biog.). In 1876 he became a Lord Justice of Appeal, and in 1882 a Peer. Baron Bramwell was a thorough Benthamite. His sympathies were with " that band of enlightened and advanced Liberals who used to make joyous demonstrations of kid-gloved Agnos ticism at the annual British Association Meetings " (C. Fairfield s Some Account of . G. W. Wilshere, 1898, p. 102). The letters to him (in this volume) of Lord Coleridge and the Duke of Argyle confirm this. D. May 9, 1892.
BRANDES, Carl Edvard Cohen, Ph.D.,
Danish writer. B. Oct. 21, 1847, brother of Georg Brandes. Ed. Copenhagen Uni versity (philosophy and oriental languages). He took to letters and politics, and edited the Eadical Morgenbladet (1881-84) and, later, the Politiken (1884-1901). His novels, dramas, and other literary works abound in advanced Eationalist and social ideas. Eefusing to take the oath when he was elected to the Folketing in 1880, he
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