Frederick William Maitland

“ In the summer and autumn of that tenth year there was a sudden change for the worse and it became clear that Maitland could no longer winter in England. "If I have to sing a Nunc Dimittis," he wrote to Mr R. L. Poole, "it will run 'Quia oculi mei viderunt originalem Actum de Uniformitate primi anni Reg. Eliz.' Few can say as much.... I think of a voyage to S. America as S. Africa looks too warm for a man of peace." ”

“ It is difficult to recall an instance in the annals of English scholarship in which so large an undertaking has owed so much to the diligence and genius of a single man.
Both in conception and execution it is a noble series of volumes. Maitland's interest in law was not bounded by a province, a period, or a country; and the thirteen good and lawful men who on November 24, 1886, signed the letter from which the Selden Society sprang did not make their appeal to the Bar and Bench of England in the cause of any narrow or pedantic antiquarian curiosity. ”

“ That by the natural workings of his enthusiastic genius Maitland would have been drawn to history whatever might have been the outward circumstances of his career, is as certain as anything can be in the realm of psychological conjecture. Men of the ordinary fibre are confronted by alternatives which are all the more real and painful by reason of their essential indifference. ”

“ With health so broken that even the summers in England seldom passed without periods of illness and pain Maitland embarked upon one of the great undertakings of his life, an edition of the Year Books of Edward II. "These Year Books are a precious heritage. They come to us from life. Some day they [Pg 164] will return to life once more at the touch of some great historian." The spirit in which Maitland approached the work is indicated by two quotations, the first from Roger North, the second from Albert Sorel, which are printed on the title page of each volume. ”

“ We are always being reminded of that wise saying in the Fellowship Dissertation, that English political philosophy has suffered by overmuch simplicity.
A mind so exact and disinterested and endowed with so rare a capacity for divesting itself of the intellectual accretions of its own age was naturally full of dissolvents for ambitious theories. Maitland [Pg 79] expressed in his Inaugural lecture his high respect for the genius and learning of Henry Maine, and nothing which was then written would have been afterwards retracted. ”

“ To the deepest and most serious minds the literature of knowledge is also the literature of power. Maitland's outlook and ideal were at the period of intellectual virility greatly affected by two books, Savigny's Geschichte des Römischen Rechts and Stubbs' Constitutional History. The English book he found in a London Club and "read it because it was interesting," falling perhaps, as he afterwards suggested, for that very reason "more completely under its domination than those who have passed through schools of history are likely to fall." ”

“ The life of severe scholarship may, and perhaps often does, dry up the fountains of sympathy, but this was not the case with Maitland. The current of his affections ran deep and strong, and so easily was his enthusiasm fired that he would praise the books of young authors with a delight which seemed almost unqualified if they happened to contain any real merit. No one was more entirely free from self-importance or from any desire to defend, after they had become untenable, positions which he had once been inclined to maintain. ”

“ Maitland never allowed his clear strong common sense to be influenced by that vague emotion which the conventional imagination of half-informed people readily draws from antiquity. He loved the past but never defended an institution because it was old. ”

“ Instead of history ready-made Maitland gave us history in the making, antedating nothing and excluding with a care no less scrupulous than Gardiner's the world's knowledge of to-morrow from the world's knowledge of to-day. More than one fairy story dissolved at his touch, among others the tale of a Convocation summoned in 1559 to consent to the Act of Uniformity. The parent of the legend, an Anglican Canon, with a comical misapprehension of his antagonist's resources, ventured to measure swords with Maitland who had exposed his shortcomings in a Magazine. ”

“ He did as much as a man could achieve in Blackstone's time. Maitland himself, I believe, shared this opinion. The next man who took in hand a book somewhat similar to that undertaken by Blackstone was Sir Henry Maine. He achieved a great measure of success. He stimulated in a way which it was difficult for anyone to realise who had not read Maine's Ancient Law when it first appeared, public interest in law and jurisprudence. He gave to the English world a new view of the possibilities of interest possessed by the study of law. ”

“ The wonderful work which has here been imperfectly described was accomplished under a shadow. Maitland, who was never really a strong man, was, even before his marriage, not without warnings that he was overtaxing his physical resources. ”

“ It appeared to Maitland that one of the obstacles to an exact understanding of the past was the general acceptance of the idea that a normal programme could be laid down for the human race. Even if there were sufficient evidence to show that each independent portion of the human race must move through a fated series of changes, it remained a fact that the rapidly progressive groups had not been independent. "Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors did not arrive at the alphabet or at the Nicene Creed by traversing a long series of 'stages'; they leapt to the one and to the other." ”

“ Lord Acton once spoke of "our three Cambridge historians, Maine, Lightfoot, Maitland," each a pioneer in his own region of research, and each a name of significance for universal history. Maitland was not a Conservative like Maine, or a Churchman like Lightfoot; he was simply a scientific historian, with a singularly open and candid mind, and with a detachment almost unique from the prejudice of sect or party. ”

“ Mr, now Sir Frederick, Pollock had preceded Maitland by six years at Eton and Trinity and was also a member of Lincoln's Inn. Coming of a famous legal family, and himself already rising to distinction as a scientific lawyer, Mr Pollock appreciated both the value of English legal history and the neglect into which it had been allowed to fall. He sought out Maitland and a friendship was formed between the two [Pg 24] men which lasted in unbroken intimacy and frequent intellectual communion to the end. ”

“ Every householder has a hide; every hide has 120 acres of arable; every hide is worth one pound a year; every householder has a team; every team is of eight oxen; every team is worth one pound. If all this be not so, then it ought to be so, and must be deemed to be so. Then by a Procrustean system he packs the complex and irregular facts into his scheme!" It is no light enterprise to understand the puzzled and inadequate thought which lies at the basis of our social history; Maitland believed that the reward was worthy of the effort. ”

“ It was a handsome quarto, bound in dark blue cloth, and the first publication of a Society called after the name of John Selden. The Selden Society, planned in the autumn of 1886 and founded in the following year "to encourage the study and advance the knowledge of English law," was the creature of Maitland's enthusiasm, and of all his achievements stood nearest to his heart. Indeed, without disparagement to accomplished help-mates and contributors, it may be said that without Maitland's genius, learning and devotion the Selden Society would have been unthinkable. ”

“ Under Sidgwick's [Pg 10] influence Maitland's intellect deepened and widened. The piano was ejected from the college room; the University running path knew him no more; mathematics were abandoned for philosophy with such good result that a scholarship was gained at Trinity, and that in the Moral and Mental Science Tripos of 1872 Maitland came out at the head of the First Class, bracketed with his friend W. Cunningham, who has since won high distinction in the field of economic history. But the chief prize of undergraduate ambition, a Fellowship at Trinity, was denied him. ”

“ It is part of our English system to expect of our professors, however eminent they may be, that they should examine undergraduates, serve on boards, committees, syndicates, and take an active part in University and College affairs. Maitland did not seek to escape any duty which he might be expected to discharge. He examined five times in the Law Tripos, twice in the Historical Tripos and three times in the Moral Science Tripos. ”

“ One cannot dogmatise about the motives of the dead; our dogmas are but plausible hypotheses, and so complex is human nature, so inexhaustible is life's casuistry that the likeliest conjecture may fail of the mark. "There is a great risk of such speculation being wrong." Touches like this reveal the fact that the disciple of Sidgwick had learnt his master's lesson.
The scholarship at Trinity, carrying with it a place at the scholar's table, brought Maitland into communion with the ablest men in the College. ”

“ It often happens that a youth who has attracted little attention at school [Pg 12] by reason of his failure to satisfy the limited conventions of schoolboy excellence, springs into sudden prominence at the University. His conversation attracts notice; his friends discover that he has original opinions, or some peculiar charm of bearing, or that his gifts of mind or character are out of the common. So it was with Maitland. ”

“ Were they the Saved of Faith?—and so on through a series of hypotheses each more grotesque and fantastic than the last and delivered in the clear grave tones which made Maitland's humour irresistible.
Among the most welcome guests at Brookside in the days of the Readership and at the West Lodge in the early days of Maitland's tenure of the Downin [Pg 65] g Chair was J. K. Stephen, the brilliant author of Lapsus Calami. J. K. Stephen, son of Sir James and nephew of Leslie Stephen, most tender, witty, and vivacious of companions, was on every account dear to Maitland and his wife. ”

“ The appearance of the Note Book showed that Cambridge possessed a scholar who could edit a big medieval text with as sure a touch as Stubbs, and the book received a warm welcome from those who were entitled to judge of its merits. It had been a costly book to prepare and it was brought out at Maitland's own charges. In the introduction he took occasion to point out that in other countries important national records were apt to be published by national enterprise; and that in England the wealth of unpublished records was exceptional. "We have been embarrassed by our riches, our untold riches. ”

“ That wet Sunday made Maitland a welcome guest at the Stephen's house; and it brought other happiness in its train. In 1886 Maitland was married in the village church of Brockenhurst, Hants, to Florence Henrietta, eldest daughter of Mr Herbert Fisher, some time Vice Warden of the Stannaries, and niece of Mrs Leslie Stephen. Two daughters, the elder born in 1887, and the younger in 1889, were the offspring of the marriage. ”

“ Men of high academic achievement sometimes fail in the practical professions, by reason of a certain abstract habit of mind or from an engrained unsociability of temperament. Neither of these disad [Pg 15] vantages affected Maitland. A combined training in philosophy and law had given him just that capacity for deriving principles from the facts of experience, and of using the facts of experience as the touchstone of principles, which is essential to the adroit and intelligent use of legal science; and for all his learning and zeal there was nothing harsh and unsocial about him. ”

“ Academic oratory is generally above the average in tone and ability, but is seldom spirited or passionate, and often goes astray into subtleties and side issues. In the judgment of some members of his audience, Maitland's speaking was quite unlike any other oratory which was heard in Cambridge. The whole man seemed quick with fire. ”

“ Henry Sidgwick, the revered master of philosophy, went first, then Lord Acton, finally, in 1904, Leslie Stephen. Some words which Maitland spoke of Henry Sidgwick have already been quoted in this memoir; they are passionate in the intensity of their affection and regard. Acton was a friend of less ancient standing, who by his high character and vast learning had conquered Maitland's unreserved enthusiasm ”

“ Maitland's early enthusiasm for the German master took a characteristic form: he began a translation of the history.
The translation of Savigny was neither completed nor published. Maitland's first contribution to legal literature was an anonymous article which appeared in the Westminster Review in 1879. This was not primarily an historical disquisition though it displayed a width of historical knowledge surprising in so young a man, but a bold, eloquent, and humorous plea for a sweeping change in the English law of Real Property. "Let all Property be personal property. ”

“ In a subsequent paper contributed to the Eranus Club Maitland recurred to his central thesis, that the experience of the progressive nations was interdependent and unique, and incapable, for that very reason, of affording a basis for an inductive science of politics. It is among the many refreshing qualities of Maitland's work that while he is always close to his facts he is never out of the atmosphere of large and animating ideas. ”