Reviews
| Author | Paul Jackson,Leonard Lazar,Gordon Borrie,L. C. Green,S. A. Smith,L. J. Blom‐Cooper,H. A. Hammelmann,O. C. Giles,S. H. Bate,F. A. Mann,C. P. Harvey |
| Date | 01 January 1966 |
| Published date | 01 January 1966 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1966.tb01108.x |
REVIEWS
THE LETTERS
OF
FREDERIC
WILLIAM
MAITLAND.
Edited
by
C.
H.
S.
FIFOOT.
[Cambridge
:
University
Press.
1005.
xxiv
and
880
and
(index)
6
pp.
84s.
net.]
Tirrs
volume, which haa becn handsomely produced by the Cambridge
University Press in conjunction with the Scldcn Society, contains all the
known surviving letters, some
801
in number, of
F.
W.
Maitland, apart from
mere notes
or
memoranda of business engagements.
It
is
a
fascinating book,
and
as
one reads one
is
continually struck with amazement
at
what Maitland
accomplished
in
his fifty-six years. By the time of his early death he was
in
the same class
of
liistorians
as
Gibbon and Macaulay. Yet
for
most
of
this
time he was
a
sick man, compelled to winter out of England, and in the rest
of the yeor
to
dischnrgc the duties of liis Cambridge Professorship.
To
take
the years from
1889-98
alone, one cannot help wondering whether any other
English scholar in any subject
has
produced within
so
short
a
period of time
such
a
quantity of work of the highcst quality. In
1898
he published his
edition of the Parliament Roll of
1808.
In
1895
appenred the great
History
of
English
Law
with which Pollock’s name
is
associated.
In
1897
came the
masterly
Domosday
Book
atid
Boyond,
and
aa
Mr. Fifoot says, “Throughout
these preoccupations
his
time and
his
mind wcre
at
the call
of
the Selden
Society,
to
set
its
standards and to foster
its
growth. Between
1889
and
1898
he was solely responsible for two volumes, jointly responsible for
a
third and
closely associated with
a
fourth.”
It
is
difticult to imagine how
it
waa
done without modern aids to research such
as
typewriters, dictating machines
and micro-photographs. (One letter
(No.
DG1)
shows that
at
the turn of
the century Maitland was using photographs
of
Yearbook manuscripts. By
modern standards they
must
have been clumsy affairs.)
No
doubt Maitland
had certain advantages.
He
was not submerged beneath tlie unnecessary
committees (and their reports) of modern university life.
Nor
was lie worn
down with thc grind of tutorial tcnching; indeed it
is
noticeable that under-
graduates hardly appear. in
his
letters at all, except for one
(No.
%),
which
makes the percipient comment that young Englishmcn are too shy
to
benefit
from the case method
of
teaching. But several letters
(Nos.
81,
224)
indicate
that he was punctilious about discharging
liis
lecturing obligations even
in
subjects in which he was not primarily an expert but called
upon
to help
by reason of the absence through illness of another member
of
the Faculty.
On
one occasion (No.
41)
he complained of the burden
of
examining.
(It
would
be
interesting
to
know
just
how many scripts he had
to
read that
year. One suspccts that the number was in dozens when today it would
be in hundreds.) Nor was Maitland the kind of don who refuses to take
a
propcr
share
in
the administrative work
of
his university.
He
served for
a
time on the Council of the Senate and wos assiduous in the dlschnrge of his
duties. But it is plain from some incidental remnrks that he could do in
a
few weeks,
or
cvcn in
a
few days,
in
the Public Record Office what would take
other men months
or
even years.
It
is
also probable that printers and
publishers worked with
a
greater speed in those days. For example,
tlie
Lifo
of
Loslie
slophon,
begun as
a
labour
of
love in October 1904, was ready
for the printer in May
19013
after Maitland had taken almost painful anxiety
to
consult all those who might have been able to help on even the smallcst
points of fact
or
comment. The proofs
had
been rcturned within two months
and the index was being compiled in September, and the whole work was
ready for publication in October of the same year. “Never
no
more
98
JAN.
1006
REVIEW
8
99
biographies for me,” said Maitland as he laid down his dutiful pen only
two months before departing on his last voyage to the Canaries.
But really this extraordinary career would have been possible only in an age
which idoliscd the amateur in all spheres of life
as
Victorian England did.
Neither Eton nor Cambridge have ever been notable’for the pressure which
they have put on able boys. They have held firmly to the belief that perhaps
the greatest service which any educational institution can perform for
ita
members
is
to leave them alone.
It
is
a
twentieth-century fallacy to believe
that what
is
not taught
is
not learnt.
So
Maitland came up to Cambridge
as
a
commoner from Eton knowing a little Classics, some more about English
Literature, and with some fondness for music and running. At the end of
his
flrst
year “the idle whim
of
an idle undergraduate” led him into Hcnry
Sidgwick’s lecture room, where his mind became fired with enthusiasm for
philosophy. Unsuccessful in his application for
a
Fellowship
at
Trinity,
Cambridge, he was called to
tlie
Bar, where for three years he
WM
in the
chnmbers of
B.
B.
Rogers, who later paid this tribute
to
his
pupil:
“He
had not been with me
a
week before
I
found that
I
had inmy chambers such
n
lawyer
as
I
had never met before.
I
have forgotten, if
I
ever knew, where
and how he acquired his mastery
of
law; he certainly
did
not acquire it in my
chambers; he was
a
consummate lawyer ,when he entered them.” Chance
again played its part when an idle hour In the library
of
a
London club
induccd Maitland to take down Stubb’s
Uonstitutional
History.
From that
moment Maitland knew that his life’s work lay in English Legal History.
All the equipment of the medieval historian-Latin, German, French,
palaeography-he acquired apparently unaided in his own time.
One cannot help imagining how it would all be today. Maitland would have
arrived nt Cambridge with testimonials and scholnrships. He would have
been carefully tutored throughout his three years, and then, after
a
period
at
the Bar, would no doubt have been tempted back to Cambridgc to engage upon
“postgraduate rcsearch
’’
(how Maitland would have laughed at that term) to
be followed inevitably by
a
fellowship. Maitlnnd would then have won his
spurs
writing case notes for the learned reviews (one thing can be said with
certainty, Maitland’s notes would have been more modest and more courteous
in tone than most of
those
published today). One hopes, without conviction,
that the professionalism of
1966
would have produced the
same
golden
triumphal result
88
the casual amateur attitude of late Victorian England.
It
wns hardly to be expected that this volume could throw much new light
on Maitland as
a
person
or
on legal history as
a
subject, but
tliere
are some
revelations which are either interesting
or
entertaining. Probably few
suspected that Maitland had such close contact with the world of scholarship
in tlie United States and particularly
at
Harvard. Indeed one
is
inclined
to suspect that his genius was more recogniscd on the far side
of
the Atlantic
than in England. Those who are interested in the history and affairs of
Cambridge University will find much of novelty in the correspondence with
Henry Jackson, most of which
is
here printed for the
first
time, A few odd
quotations may be given: “My voyage
WM
abominable.
I
am driven into
the Second Class.
I
like Second Class
men
(not women)! they arc often very
interesting people who have sccn odd things and been in strange places”
(No.
848).
“At times
I
hate Equity and think of her as
a
short-sighted busy-
body. Yet
I
was bred in Equity chambers and you should despise the common
lawyer
as
an inferior person”
(No.
472).
On
Legal
History
8s
a
subject there
is
a
letter
(No.
8)
from Mnitland at
the
age
of twenty-six which showed that his powers were already mature and
developed. There
is
also much of interest on the technique
of
editing year-
books and also something on the internal history, much of
it
sad,
of
the Selden
Society in its early days. New light
L
also
thrown on the suppressed
Rolls
Series edition of Glanville.
A
little
more light
is
also thrown on the
mysterious question of Pollock’s share in the great
Hiatory
of
English
Law.
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