Delius,

Delius, NIKOLAUS, a distinguished German Shakespearean critic, was born at Bremen, 19th September 1813, and studied philology at Bonn and Berlin, and in England and France. He finally settled in 1846 at Bonn, where he became extraordinary professor in 1855, and professor in 1863, and where he died 18th November 1888. His early lectures were on Sanskrit and the Romance tongues, but he afterwards devoted himself to the English language and literature, and as a student of Shakespeare took a place that, in the opinion of most scholars, was second to none. Apart from excursions of lesser importance in other fields of literature, he published Abhandlungen zu Shakspeare (1878), &c.; and his edition of Shakespeare's works (Elberfeld, 7 vols. 1854–61; 5th ed. 2 vols. 1882) is an acknowledged masterpiece, its notes a marvel of terse sagacity.