FREDERIC WILLIAM MAITLAND subjects in which he was interested. It was out of the abundance of this interest that he wrote of a certain piece of minute and intricate textual criticism that its .perusal "made the best detective story of Boisgobe" or Gaborieau seem stale, flat, and probable." Everyone knows how lightly he bore his great learning and what gayety his inex haustible wit infused into the most unprom ising subjects. His success here must be ascribed to causes that lie deeper than the possession of a style formed upon the best models, or a turn for making happy phrases. He had a fine sense of proportion and value, and he was a great teacher. He kept always before himself the object of making his thought clear and precise, in so far as it was susceptible of precision. It is signifi cant that, much as he admired Gibbon, he considered that for purposes of historical exposition, his style was vicious. He was the last of men to shun criticism of himself, and in this respect disloyalty to him would consist only in the suggestion that he never erred. The truth is that although his courtesy never failed him, he was in one important respect deficient in sympathy. No one, I think, can fail to be sensible of this in his attitude toward the mediaeval Church, an institution with which he had to deal in so many relations. He was by inclination and conviction strongly anti-clerical, and he never quite succeeded in suppressing this bias. He was chosen, as likely to be quite impartial, to treat, in the Cambridge Modern History, the delicate question of the Reformation Settlement. Impartial he certainly was, but it was an impartiality that regarded all parties to the conflict with contemptuous patience. For once his trifling was out of place, his wit degenerated into frivolity. Sometimes he was inclined to press too hard the theories which he formed or adopted. Domesday Book and Beyond offers examples of this. He tried to find a way out of the dilemma
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of maintaining primitive freedom without admitting primitive communism in the sense of corporate life and action. Perhaps the dilemma would not have existed for an intelligence less subtle, less constantly nour ished by legal and philosophical studies, but to him it was certainly very real. Still the solution which he offered, the introduction of the ideas of automatism and reality, is not really a solution at all since it speaks to the question of development rather than that of origin. It explains the process by which later conditions were reached, but it leaves in obscurity the conditions out of which they grew. Then, in the same work, he made great use of the theory elaborated by Meitzen in regard to the1 expression of racial characteristics in the method of settle ment — the contrast between the Teutonic nucleated village and the Celtic hamlet. But this has scarcely survived the fire of criticism with which it has been riddled both on the continent and in England. On the other hand his abundant use of Gierke's theories has met with better fortune. Still, when future criticism shall have done its utmost, there will remain for all time the figure of a great scholar and a noble man who loved learning because he loved truth, and sought it eagerly wherever it might be found. His work goes on, for generations that knew him not will gather instruction and inspiration from his books. But only those who knew him can measure the greatness of his loss. His friends and contemporaries have in many quarters reg istered their sense of bereavement, and those many younger men whom he taught and counselled, will ever remember him with reverence as well as gratitude. If they felt for him the love which he so inevitably called forth, their consolation must lie in the memory of an association with an august master whom they will ever deem worthy of all honor. Trinitv College. Cambridge, Eng., March, 1907.
