It is therefore a minority of a minority which he addresses, the
intellectual _elite_ which does the world's thinking. To impress these
is far more difficult than to impress the multitude; for they are
already surfeited with good writing, and are apt to reject with a
shoulder-shrug whatever does not coincide with their own tenor of
thought.
What I mean by a critic in this connection is not a witty and agreeable
_causeur_, like the late Jules Janin, who, taking a book for his text,
discoursed entertainingly about everything under the sun; but an
interpreter of a civilization and a representative of a school of
thought who sheds new light upon old phenomena--men like Lessing,
Matthew Arnold, and Taine. The latest candidate for admission to this
company, whose title, I think, no one who has read him will dispute, is
the Dane, Georg Brandes.
Dr. Brandes was born in Copenhagen in 1842, and is accordingly
fifty-three years of age (1895). At the age of seventeen he entered the
University of his native city, devoting himself first to jurisprudence,
and occupying himself later with philosophical and aesthetical studies.
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