Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition | Page 9

on his discharge determined to earn his living by writing for the stage. His first piece, �� la vejez viruelas, was produced on the 14th of October 1824, and proved the writer to be the legitimate successor of the younger Moratin. His industry was astonishing: between October 1824 and November 1828, he composed thirty-nine plays, six of them original, the rest being translations or recasts of classic masterpieces. In 1831 he published a translation of Tibullus, and acquired by it an unmerited reputation for scholarship which secured for him an appointment as sub-librarian at the national library. But the theatre claimed him for its own, and with the exception of Elena and a few other pieces in the fashionable romantic vein, his plays were a long series of successes. His only serious check occurred in 1840; the former liberal had grown conservative with age, and in La Ponchada he ridiculed the National Guard. He was dismissed from the national library, and for a short time was so unpopular that he seriously thought of emigrating to America; but the storm blew over, and within two years Bret��n de los Herreros had regained his supremacy on the stage. He became secretary to the Spanish Academy, quarrelled with his fellow-members, and died at Madrid on the 8th of November 1873. He is the author of some three hundred and sixty original plays, twenty-three of which are in prose. No Spanish dramatist of the nineteenth century approaches him in comic power, in festive invention, and in the humorous presentation of character, while his metrical dexterity is unique. Marcela o a cual de los tr��s? (1831), Mu��rete; y ver��s! (1837) and La Escuela del matrimonio (1852) still hold the stage, and are likely to hold it so long as Spanish is spoken.
See Marqu��s de Mol��ns, Bret��n de los Herreros, recuerdos de su vida y de sus obras (Madrid, 1883); Obras de Bret��n de Herreros (5 vols., Madrid, 1883); E. Pi?eyro, El Romanticismo en Espa?a (Paris, 1904).
(J. F.-K.)
BRETSCHNEIDER, KARL GOTTLIEB (1776-1848), German scholar and theologian, was born at Gersdorf in Saxony. In 1794 he entered the university of Leipzig, where he studied theology for four years. After some years of hesitation he resolved to be ordained, and in 1802 he passed with great distinction the examination for candidatus theologiae, and attracted the regard of F.V. Reinhard, author of the System der christlichen Moral (1788-1815), then court-preacher at Dresden, who became his warm friend and patron during the remainder of his life. In 1804-1806 Bretschneider was Privat-docent at the university of Wittenberg, where he lectured on philosophy and theology. During this time he wrote his work on the development of dogma, Systematische Entwickelung aller in der Dogmatik vorkommenden Begriffe nach den symbolischen Schriften der evangelisch-lutherischen und reformirten Kirche (1805, 4th ed. 1841), which was followed by others, including an edition of Ecclesiasticus with a Latin commentary. On the advance of the French army under Napoleon into Prussia, he determined to leave Wittenberg and abandon his university career. Through the good offices of Reinhard, he became pastor of Schneeberg in Saxony (1807). In 1808 he was promoted to the office of superintendent of the church of Annaberg, in which capacity he had to decide, in accordance with the canon law of Saxony, many matters belonging to the department of ecclesiastical law. But the climate did not agree with him, and his official duties interfered with his theological studies. With a view to a change he took the degree of doctor of theology in Wittenberg in August 1812. In 1816 he was appointed general superintendent at Gotha, where he remained until his death in 1848. This was the great period of his literary activity.
In 1820 was published his treatise on the gospel of St John, entitled Probabilia de Evangelii el Epistolarum Joannis Apostoli indole et origine, which attracted much attention. In it he collected with great fulness and discussed with marked moderation the arguments against Johannine authorship. This called forth a number of replies. To the astonishment of every one, Bretschneider announced in the preface to the second edition of his Dogmatik in 1822, that he had never doubted the authenticity of the gospel, and had published his Probabilia only to draw attention to the subject, and to call forth a more complete defence of its genuineness. Bretschneider remarks in his autobiography that the publication of this work had the effect of preventing his appointment as successor to Karl C. Tittmann in Dresden, the minister Detlev von Einsiedel (1773-1861) denouncing him as the "slanderer of John" (Johannissch?nder). His greatest contribution to the science of exegesis was his Lexicon Manuale Graeco-Latinum in libros Novi Testamenti (1824, 3rd ed. 1840). This work was valuable for the use which its author made of the Greek of the Septuagint, of the Old and