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 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 &quot; supreme achievement in dignified utterance of noble thoughts &quot; (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 &quot; (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 &quot; that band of enlightened and advanced Liberals who used to make joyous demonstrations of kid-gloved Agnos ticism at the annual British Association Meetings &quot; (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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