xxxii 



abandoned the profession. He soon married, and settled at Taunton, where 

 his father also settled. He then began the course of reading and collection 

 of books, which formed the basis of his future career. In 1821 he took 

 orders in the Establishment, and became the incumbent of a new church at 

 Gloucester. This post he resigned in 1830, having in the mean time found 

 that his vocation lay towards theological writing ; he had then published 

 various controversal tracts on the prophecies. In 1838 he was appointed 

 librarian to the Archbishop of Canterbury (Howley), from whom he re- 

 ceived the degree of D.D.; at the death of that prelate, in 1848, he re- 

 turned to Gloucester, where he passed the rest of his life. From 1838 to 

 1865 is the period in which the works were produced which made him 

 conspicuous among writers on mediseval history and theology. 



We need not enumerate Dr. Maitland's numerous and multifarious wri- 

 tings ; perhaps the most read is the ' Dark Ages, a Series of Essays,' in 

 indication of the period so called from the common charge of neglect of 

 literature and of the text of the Sacred Scriptures. He was not a popular 

 writer ; his subjects are too recondite, and his learning too profound. 



But he is one of a class of whose writings it must be said, that wherever 

 they take they bite. They are imbued, but not in excess, with a kind of 

 humour which seems almost their own ; some would describe it as quaint, 

 but this word alone only distinguishes its class from others ; a journalist 

 describes it as " sly, dry, and shy, but never high." It has more likeness 

 in it to the peculiar humour of Pascal than is seen in any other writer of 

 our day. The character of Dr. Maitland's learning is that of the man who 

 reads books which he has always by him, as distinguished from that of 

 the man who knows how to go to the library and find by references. He 

 had nothing to do with libraries except his own, and that of which he was. 

 for ten years in loco possidentis. Of this library he published a list of the 

 English works previous to 1600 which are found in it, with valuable biogra- 

 phical references. x\s well as a man of letters, he was a book-fancier, and 

 in early life a little of a bibliomaniac. His taste for these articles led him, 

 when he first began to collect, to learn to bind them ; and the writer of 

 this notice remembers endeavouring, when a boy, to extract a book lettered 

 * Maitland's Works,' and finding that he was trying his strength upon one 

 of the uprights of the bookcase, all of which were backed and lettered by 

 the owner. 



Dr. Maitland became a Fellow of the Society in 1839. He was for some 

 years Editor of the * British Magazine.' Cautious in the highest degree 

 about literary investigation, he was by temperament a bold schemer. Long 

 before Sir Rowland Hill appeared in the field he proposed to the Minister 

 of the day that the Government should carry letters j^r nothing-, he was 

 satisfied that the deficit would be much more than made up by the impulse 

 given to trade ; and there are presumptions in favour of his view in the 

 extraordinary tendency upwards of the revenue since the great change in 

 the Post Oftice. In literature he was decidedly of opinion that it would be 



