SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading we notice such Books of the week as has. not been reserved for review in other formal Frederic William Maitland. By A. L. Smith. (The Clarendon Press. 2s. 6d.)—This is a tribute of praise worthy of the man to whose memory it is paid,—more it would not be possible to say. Professor Maitland was a rare combination of great qualities. He had the best gifts of the lawyer; he was an historian of the finest quality, in whom science did not exclude human interest. No one could be better qualified to speak of his work than Mr. A. L. Smith. He knows it well, and he can appreciate it in a way that shows a real mastery of the subject. Whether he is speaking of the general temper of the man, or of special instances in which he brought an illuminating genius to bear on problems of history, he always puts the case with admirable clearness. Take, for instance, what he says of Professor Maitland's view of Elizabeth's action in the Settlement of Religion. It was put forth in the English Historical Review, one of the articles which so often fall into an undeserved oblivion. The substance of it was that when it came to a crisis the great Queen was "swayed rather by her beliefs and disbeliefs than by any calculations of loss and gain." That is what one would like to believe of her. In the second of the two lectures there is much that is interesting about Maitland's legal work,—the writer of this notice is carried back as ho reads nearly a quarter of a century to " Pleas of the Crown for the County of Gloucester" (1884), a book which no one could easily forget. "Too brilliant, too fatiguing," some one said of him. Mr. Smith quotes what George II. said when some one accused Wolfe of being mad : " I wish he would bite some of my other Generals." And so Lincoln, when Grant was charged with drunkenness, remarked : " What brand of whisky does he use? I should like to know, for if it makes fighting Generals like Grant, I should like to get some of it for distribution." A budding historian might do worse than get bitten by Maitland. A bibliography follows the lectures. The list begins in 1880 with an essay which appeared in Mind, "The Relation of Punishment to Temptation" ; it ends in 1906 with the " Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen" ; the intervening years were occupied with a strenuous literary activity.
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