The Collected Papers of Frederic William Maitland

WITH one important exception the three volumes here published practically represent the whole mass of Maitland's scattered writing. A few very short notices have been omitted, but wherever an article, however brief, contains a new grain of historical knowledge or reveals Maitland's original thought upon some problem of law or history, it has been included in this collection.

We begin with a philosophical dissertation submitted by a young Cambridge graduate to the examiners for a Trinity Fellowship and end with the tribute to the memory of a pupil composed only a few days before his last illness by a great master of history, by one of the greatest scholars in the annals of English scholarship.

These papers cover a wide surface. Some are philosophical, others biographical, but for the most part they belong to Maitland's special sphere of legal and social history. Some pieces are confessedly popular, such as the brilliant outline of English legal history which concludes the second volume ; others, and of such is the bulk of the collection, are concerned with problems the simplest terms of which are not apprehended without special study.