The life of a great scholar may be filled with activity as intense
and continuous as that demanded by any other calling, and yet is in
the nature of things uneventful. Or rather it is a story which tells
itself not in outward details of perils endured, places visited,
appointments held, but in the revelation of the scholar's mind given
in his work. Of such revelation there is no stint in the case of
Frederic William Maitland. Within his brief span of life he crowded
a mass of intellectual achievements which, if regard be had to its
quality as well as to its volume, has hardly, if ever, been equalled
in the history of English learning. And yet though a long array of
volumes stands upon the Library shelves to give witness to Maitland's
work, and not only to the work, but to the modest, brilliant and human
spirit which shines through it all and makes it so different from the
achievement of many learned men, some few words may be fitly said here
as to his life and as to the place which he held and holds in our
learning.
He was born on the 28th of May, 1850, at 53 Guilford Street, London,
the only son of John Gorham Maitland and Emma Daniell. Father and
mother both came of good intellectual lineage. John Gorham Maitland
was the son of Samuel Roffey Maitland, the vigorous, learned and
unconventional historian whose volume on the Dark Ages, published in
1844, dissipated a good deal of uncritical Protestant tradition. Emma
Daniell was the daughter of John Frederic Daniell, a distinguished
physicist, who became a Fellow of the Royal Society at the age of
twenty-three, invented the hygrometer and published, as Professor of
Chemistry at King's College, a well-known _Introduction to Chemical
Philosophy_.
Such ancestry, at once historical and scientific, may explain some of
Maitland's tastes and aptitudes. Indeed the words in which Dr Jessop
has summarised the work of Samuel Maitland might be applied with equal
propriety to the grandson. "Animated by a rare desire after simple
truth, generously candid and free from all pretence or pedantry, he
wrote in a style which was peculiarly sparkling, lucid and attractive."
The secret of this stimulating and suggestive quality lay in the fact
that Samuel Maitland was a man of independent mind who took nothing
for granted and investigated things for himself. In 1891 his grandson
wrote the following words to his eldest sister, who asked whether
their grandfather's works would live. "Judging him merely as I should
judge any other literary man I think him great. It seems to me that
he did what was wanted just at the moment when it was wanted and so
has a distinct place in the history of history in England. The _Facts
and Documents_ (illustrative of the History, Documents and Rites
of the Ancient Albigenses and Waldenses) is the book that I admire
most. Of course it is a book for the few, but then those few will be
just the next generation of historians. It is a book which 'renders
impossible' a whole class of existing books. I don't mean physically
impossible--men will go on writing books of that class--but henceforth
they will not be mistaken for great historians. One has still to
do for legal history something of the work which S. R. M. did for
ecclesiastical history--to teach men e.g. that some statement about
the thirteenth century does not become the truer because it has been
constantly repeated, that 'a chain of testimony' is never stronger than
its first link. It is the 'method' that I admire in S. R. M. more even
than the style or the matter--the application to remote events of those
canons of evidence which we should all use about affairs of the present
day, e.g. of the rule which excludes hearsay."
Cambridge and the bar were familiar traditions. Samuel Maitland was
a member of Trinity College, Cambridge, who, having been called to
the bar, abandoned the professional pursuit of the law for historical
research. He took orders, became Librarian at Lambeth, and ultimately
retired to Gloucester to read and to write. John Gorham, seventh
wrangler, third classic, Chancellor's medallist, crowned a brilliant
undergraduate career by a Fellowship in his father's college and was
then called to the bar, but finding little practice drifted away
into the Civil Service, becoming first, examiner, and afterwards,
in succession to his friend James Spedding, secretary to the Civil
Service Commission, which last office he held till his death in 1863,
at the age of forty-five. That he could write with point and vigour is
made clear by a pamphlet upon the Property and Income Tax, published
in 1853, but the work of the Civil Service Commission must have left
little leisure for writing, and early death cut short the career of
a man whose high gifts were as remarkable to his friends as was the
modesty with which he veiled them from the world[1]. Frederic William,
too, passed from Cambridge to the law and then away to work more
congenial to his rare and original powers.
Of direct parental influence Maitland can have known little. His
mother died in 1851 when he was a baby, and twelve years afterwards,
six months before a Brighton preparatory school was exchanged for
Eton, he and his two sisters were left fatherless and the sole charge
of the family devolved upon Miss Daniell the aunt, who stood in a
mother's place. Dr Maitland, the historian, lived on till 1866 and his
home in Gloucester, still called Maitland House, was from time to
time enlivened by the visits of grandchildren. The fair landscape of
Gloucestershire--the wooded slopes of the Cotswolds, the rich pastures
of the Severn Valley with the silver thread of river widening into a
broad band as it nears the Bristol Channel, the magical outline of
the Malvern Hills, the blaze of the nocturnal forges in the Forest of
Dean, were familiar to Maitland's boyhood. Gloucestershire was his
county, well-known and well-loved. The beautiful old manor-house of
Brookthorpe, one of those small grey-stone manor-houses which are the
special pride of Gloucestershire, stood upon the lands which had come
into the possession of the family through the marriage of Alexander
Maitland with Caroline Busby in 1785. Round it in the parishes of
Brookthorpe and Harescombe lay "Squire Maitland's" lands--a thriving
cheese-making district until Canada began to filch away the favour of
its Welsh customers.
Maitland was at Eton from 1863 to 1869, but failed to become prominent
either in work or play. "He played football, was for a while a
volunteer, rowed so much that he 'spoilt his style,' spent Sunday
afternoons in running to St George's chapel to hear the anthem, and
more than once began the holidays by walking home to Kensington[2]."
Long afterwards when the question of compulsory Greek was being hotly
debated in the Senate House at Cambridge he spoke with deep feeling of
a "boy at school not more than forty years ago who was taught Greek for
eight years and never learnt it ... who reserved the greater part of
his gratitude for a certain German governess ... who if he never learnt
Greek, did learn one thing, namely, to hate Greek and its alphabet and
its accents and its accidence and its syntax and its prosody, and all
its appurtenances; to long for the day when he would be allowed to
learn something else; to vow that if ever he got rid of that accursed
thing never, never again would he open a Greek book or write a Greek
word[3]." We imagine a shy, awkward delicate boy bursting into jets
of wittiness at the least provocation, caring for things which other
boys did not care for, misliking the classics, especially Greek, but
"brought out by Chaucer" as his tutor Mr E. D. Stone reports, and
discovering some taste for mathematics and a passionate interest in
music. One contemporary remembers his "jolly, curiously-lined face";
another writes that he was regarded as "a thoroughly good fellow,"
but his striking originality of mind was perhaps only realised by one
schoolfellow, Gerald Balfour, who was the sharer of many a Sunday
walk and both at Eton and Cambridge bound to Maitland by close ties
of friendship. To the masters Maitland presented none of the obvious
points of interest. Even William Johnson, that learned and catholic
scholar who made so many happy discoveries, failed to discover
Maitland. The boy was not a Hellenist and his deficiencies in Greek and
Latin prosody put him outside the intellectual pale. He was whimsical,
full of eccentric interests, of puns and paradox and original humour.
His closest school friend thought that he would possibly develop into
"a kind of philosophic Charles Lamb[4]."
In the autumn of 1869 Maitland went up to Trinity College, Cambridge,
as a Commoner. The learned Samuel Roffey had been a musician both in
theory and practice, and the taste for music descended through the
son to the grandson. The first year of Maitland's undergraduate life
was given over to music, mathematics and athletics; but his earliest
distinctions were gained not in the most but in the least intellectual
of these pursuits. Though he can never have looked otherwise than
fragile, he had outgrown his early delicacy and become an active lad
with considerable powers of endurance. He won the Freshman's mile
in four minutes forty-seven seconds, excellent time as records went
then, and obtained his "blue" as a three-miler in the Inter-University
Sports. The two mile walking race, the quarter, and the mile, fell to
him at various times in the Third Trinity Sports. Nor were his athletic
activities confined to the running path. His friend Mr Cyprian Williams
remembers his last appearance as a racing oarsman; how on the final
day of the Lent races of 1872 the Third Trinity second boat after a
successful week made a crowning bump, how in the moment of the victory
the crew were tipped over into the cold and dirty waters of the Cam,
and how in the evening the boat dined in Maitland's lodgings over
Palmer's boot-shop and kept up its festivity well into the morning.
Long before this--at the beginning of his second year at
Cambridge--Maitland found his way into Henry Sidgwick's lecture-room
and made a discovery which shall be told in his own words. "It is
now thirty years ago that some chance--I think it was the idle whim
of an idle undergraduate--took me to Sidgwick's lecture-room, there
to find teaching the like of which had never come in my way before.
There is very much else to be said of Sidgwick; some part of it has
been beautifully said this afternoon; but I should like to add this:
I believe that he was a supremely great teacher. In the first place
I remember the admirable patience which could never be out-worn
by stupidity, and which nothing but pretentiousness could disturb.
Then there was the sympathetic and kindly endeavour to overcome our
shyness, to make us talk, and to make us think. Then there was that
marked dislike for any mere reproduction of his own opinions which
made it impossible for Sidgwick to be in the bad sense the founder
of a school. I sometimes think that the one and only prejudice that
Sidgwick had was a prejudice against his own results. All this was
far more impressive and far more inspiriting to us than any dogmatism
could have been. Then the freest and boldest thinking was set forth in
words which seemed to carry candour and sobriety and circumspection to
their furthest limit. It has been said already this afternoon, but I
will say it again: I believe that no more truthful man than Sidgwick
ever lived. I am speaking of a rare intellectual virtue. However
small the class might be, Sidgwick always gave us his very best; not
what might be good enough for undergraduates, or what might serve for
temporary purposes, but the complex truth just as he saw it, with all
those reservations and qualifications, exceptions and distinctions
which suggested themselves to a mind that was indeed marvellously
subtle but was showing us its wonderful power simply because, even in
a lecture room, it could be content with nothing less than the maximum
of attainable and communicable truth. Then, as the terms went by, we
came to think of lecture time as the best time we had in Cambridge;
and some of us, looking back now, can say that it was in a very true
sense the best time that we have had in our lives. We turned away to
other studies and pursuits, but the memories of Sidgwick's lectures
lived on. The matter of the lectures, the theories and the arguments,
might be forgotten; but the method remained, the spirit remained, as an
ideal--an unattainable ideal, perhaps, but a model of perfect work. I
know that in this matter I can speak for others; but just one word in
my own case. For ten years and more I hardly saw Sidgwick. To meet him
was a rare event, a rare delight. But there he always was: the critic
and judge of any work that I might be doing: a master, who, however
forbearing he might be towards others, always exacted from himself
the utmost truthfulness of which word and thought are capable. Well,
I think it no bad thing that young men should go away from Cambridge
with such a master as that in their minds, even though in a given case
little may come of the teaching ... I can say no more. Perhaps I have
already tried to say too much. We who were, we who are, Sidgwick's
pupils, need no memorial of him. We cannot forget. Only in some way
or another we would bear some poor testimony of our gratitude and our
admiration, our reverence and our love[5]."
Such teaching was precisely calculated to ripen Maitland's unsuspected
powers. The pupil was as modest, as exact, as truth-loving as the
master, and possessed a quick turn for witty casuistry which was
quite individual though not dissimilar to Sidgwick's own gift in the
same direction. Under Sidgwick's 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. Maitland competed,
and was beaten in the competition by James Ward, now one of the most
distinguished of living psychologists. Examiners make fewer mistakes
than is commonly supposed, and on this occasion Henry Sidgwick and
Thomas Fowler reached their decision not without hesitation. While
admitting Maitland's literary brilliance and facility they discovered
in his successful rival a deeper interest in the problems of philosophy
and therefore a superior claim to a Fellowship in Moral and Mental
Science[6].
Maitland's Fellowship dissertation entitled "A Historical Sketch
of Liberty and Equality as Ideals of English Political Philosophy
from the time of Hobbes to the time of Coleridge" is, despite some
defects of proportion, a remarkable performance for so young a man.
Not only does it cover a wide range of reading, especially in the
English moralists, but it is distinguished by two characteristic
qualities--independence of judgment and a scrupulous estimate of the
canons of proof. The scholar of Trinity says many good things[7], but
says nothing at random. Even when it would have been tempting to sally
forth with a flourish of affirmation, he prefers to stand within the
zone of caution. "I am inclined to think," he writes, "(though there
is great risk of such speculations being wrong) that Hobbes was led
to exaggerate his account of man's naturally unsocial character by
a desire to bring the state of nature into discredit." 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 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. He soon achieved a reputation not only as a witty and
brilliant talker, but as a charming companion and as the most original
public speaker of his time. He was elected to be a member of the
Apostles, a small society which for many university generations has
been a bond between clever young Cambridge men and has brought them
into friendly relations with their seniors: and by the suffrages of
a larger and less select electorate he rose to be Secretary and then
President of the Union Society.
Maitland's speeches at the Union printed themselves upon the minds of
his audience as being very effective for their immediate purpose and
yet quite unlike the speeches of ordinary vote-winners. His artifice
was all his own. Others were more eloquent, more prompt in the cut
and thrust of debate, but in the power of condensing an argument
into a surprising phrase or epigram he stood alone. After his first
successful appearance as the advocate of the opening of National
Collections of Science and Art on Sunday afternoons he became the
favourite undergraduate orator of his time. "You insist that we must
keep the Mosaic Law," he argued in his maiden speech, "but under it a
man who gathered sticks on the Sabbath was stoned to death. Now I have
picked up sticks on Sundays. Will you in your consistency stone me?"
On another occasion he delighted the House by observing that at the
Reformation the English State put an end to its Roman bride but married
its deceased wife's sister. The shape of his opinions was frankly
radical and fashioned by a vehement enthusiasm for free thinking and
plain speaking. "There are two things," he remarked, "which we have
learnt by costly experience that the Law cannot control--Religious
Belief and the Rate of Interest." Compulsory attendance at College
Chapel, Church Establishment, the closing of the Cambridge Union on
Sunday mornings aroused his opposition and furnished the theme of
well-remembered speeches. "O Sir," he once exclaimed to the President
with outstretched hands, "I would I were a vested nuisance! Then I
should be sure of being protected by the whole British Public."
There is a pleasant story contributed by Professor Kenny--to whom
this portion of the narrative is greatly indebted--of a debate upon a
motion that certain annotations upon the annual report of the Union's
proceedings should be cancelled in the interests of "the literary
credit of the Society." The notes were ungrammatical, ludicrous,
unauthorised. They had been composed during the Long Vacation by the
Society's senior servant in the name of the absent Secretary. There
was nothing to be said for them save that it was hard that a good old
man should be humiliated for an excess of official zeal. Maitland was
Secretary at the time and chivalrously undertook the defence of his
subordinate. It was the eve of the Fifth of November; the name of the
mover was James. Such an historical coincidence was not lost upon
the ingenious mind of the Secretary. "Tomorrow," he observed, boldly
carrying the war into the enemy's country, "is the Feast of the Blessed
Saint Guy. Appropriately enough the House appears to be under search
this evening for indications of a new plot. Enter King James the Third,
surrounded by his minions, with a loud flourish of his own trumpet.
He produces the dark lantern of his intellect and discovers--not a
conspirator, but a mare's nest." And when, at last, by successive
strokes of humour Maitland had won over the sympathies of the House, he
proceeded to venture upon the merits of his defence. "We are attacked,"
he said, "for bad grammar. A great crime, no doubt, in some men's eyes.
For at times I have met men to whom words were everything, and whose
everything was words; men undistinguished by any other capacity, and
unknown outside this House, but reigning here in self-satisfaction,
lords of the realm of Tautology."