NIKOLAUS

DELIUS (1813–1888)  , German philologist and Shakespearean scholar, was born at Bremen on the 19th of September 1813 . He was educated at Bonn and Berlin, and took the degree of doctor in philosophy in 1838 . After travelling for some time in England, France and Germany, he returned to Bonn in 1846, where in 1855 he was appointed professor of Sanskrit, Provencal and English literature, a post he held until his death, which took place at Bonn on the 18th of November 1888 . His greatest literary achievement was his scholarly edition of Shakespeare (1854–1861) . He also edited Wace's St Nicholas (1850), a volume of Provencal songs (1853), and published a Shakspere-Lexikon (1852) . His original works include: Uber das englische Theaterwesen zu Shaksperes Zeit (1853), Gedichte (1853), Der sardinische Dialekt des dreizehnten Jahrhunderts (1868), and Abhandlungenzu Shakspere (two series, 1878 and 1888) . As a critic of Shakespeare's text he stands in the first rank . See the biographical notice by J . Schipper in Englische Studien, vol . 14 .