The Maitland Quarto Manuscript. Edited by W. A. Craigie. (W.
Blackwood for the Scottish Text Society.)—This is a careful reprint, with four facsimiles, of the quarto MS: collection of sixteenth-century Scottish verse preserved in the Pepysian library. The folio MS. collection has already been printed by the society. These two MSS. were written for Sir Richard Maitland, a prominent Scottish lawyer of the sixteenth century. who himself composed many of the poems and selected others by contemporary writers. His eldest son, William Maitland of Lcthington, achieved fame in the cause of Mary Queen of Scots. The Maitland MSS. were given, a century later, by the Duke of Lauderdale, Sir Richard's great-grandson, to Pepys, and thus escaped the fate of most Scottish writings of their time. It cannot be said that Maitland's mild satirical verse has much literary interest, but from the historical and philological stand- point his collections are of great importance to Scottish students.
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