added that he was profoundly and accurately learned in history and philosophy, and that the superficial blunders of the 18th-century philosophes irritated him as much as their doctrines. To Voltaire in particular he shows no mercy.
Of the two works named as his masterpieces, Du Pape and the Soirées de St Pétersbourg, editions are extremely numerous. No complete edition of his works appeared till 1884–1887, when one was published at Lyons in 14 volumes. This had been preceded, and has been followed, by numerous biographies and discussions: C. Barthélemy, L’Esprit de Joseph de Maistre (1859); R. de Sézeval, Joseph de Maistre (1865), and J. C. Glaser, Graf Joseph Maistre (same year); L. I. Moreau, Joseph de Maistre (1879); F. Paulhan, Joseph de Maistre et sa philosophie (1893); L. Cogordan, “Joseph de Maistre” in the Grands écrivains français (1894); F. Descostes, Joseph de Maistre avant la révolution (1896), and other works by the same writer; J. Mandoul, Un Homme d’état italien: Joseph de Maistre et la politique de la maison de Savoie (1900); and E. Grasset, Joseph de Maistre (1901). (G. Sa.)
MAISTRE, XAVIER DE (1763–1852), younger brother of
Joseph de Maistre, was born at Chambéry in October 1763. He
served when young in the Piedmontese army, and wrote his
delightful fantasy, Voyage autour de ma chambre (published 1794)
when he was under arrest at Turin in consequence of a duel.
Xavier shared the politics and the loyalty of his brother, and on
the annexation of Savoy to France, he left the service, and took
a commission in the Russian army. He served under Suvarov
in his victorious Austro-Russian campaign and accompanied the
marshal to Russia. He shared the disgrace of his general, and
supported himself for some time in St Petersburg by miniature
painting. But on his brother’s arrival in St Petersburg he was
introduced to the minister of marine. He was appointed to
several posts in the capital, but also saw active service, was
wounded in the Caucasus, and attained the rank of major-general.
He married a Russian lady and established himself in his adopted
country, even after the overthrow of Napoleon, and the consequent
restoration of the Piedmontese dynasty. For a time,
however, he lived at Naples, but he returned to St Petersburg
and died there on the 12th of June 1852. He was only once in
Paris (in 1839), when Sainte-Beuve, who has left some pleasant
reminiscences of him, met him. Besides the Voyage already
mentioned, Xavier de Maistre’s works (all of which are of very
modest dimensions) are Le Lépreux de la cité d’Aoste (1811), a
touching little story of human misfortune; Les Prisonniers du
Caucase, a powerful sketch of Russian character, La Jeune
Sibérienne, and the Expédition nocturne, a sequel to the Voyage
autour de ma chambre (1825). His style is of remarkable ease
and purity.
His works, with the exception of some brief chemical tractates, are included in the collections of Charpentier, Garnier, &c. See Sainte-Beuve’s Portraits contemporains, vol. iii.
MAITLAND, EDWARD (1824–1897), English humanitarian
writer, was born at Ipswich on the 27th of October 1824, and
was educated at Caius College, Cambridge. The son of Charles
David Maitland, perpetual curate of St James’s Chapel, Brighton,
he was intended for the Church, but his religious views did
not permit him to take holy orders. For some years he lived
abroad, first in California and then as a commissioner of Crownlands
in Australia. After his return to England in 1857 he
took up an advanced humanitarian position, and claimed to
have acquired a new sense by which he was able to discern
the spiritual condition of other people. He was associated with
Mrs Anna Kingsford (1846–1888), the lady-doctor and supporter
of vegetarianism and anti-vivisectionism, who, besides being
one of the pioneers of higher education for women, had become
a devotee of mystical theosophy; with her he brought out
Keys of the Creeds (1875), The Perfect Way: or the Finding
of Christ (1882), and founded the Hermetic Society in 1884.
After her death he founded the Esoteric Christian Union in
1891, and wrote her Life and Letters (1896). He died on the
2nd of October 1897.
MAITLAND, FREDERIC WILLIAM (1850–1906), English
jurist and historian, son of John Gorham Maitland, was born
on the 28th of May 1850, and educated at Eton and Trinity,
Cambridge, being bracketed at the head of the moral sciences
tripos of 1872, and winning a Whewell scholarship for international
law. He was called to the bar (Lincoln’s Inn) in
1876, and made himself a thoroughly competent equity lawyer
and conveyancer, but finally devoted himself to comparative
jurisprudence and especially the history of English law. In
1884 he was appointed reader in English law at Cambridge,
and in 1888 became Downing professor of the laws of England.
Though handicapped in his later years by delicate health, his
intellectual grasp and wide knowledge and research gradually
made him famous as a jurist and historian. He edited numerous
volumes for the Selden Society, including Select Pleas for the
Crown, 1200–1225, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts and The
Court Baron; and among his principal works were Gloucester
Pleas (1884), Justice and Police (1885), Bracton’s Note-Book
(1887), History of English Law (with Sir F. Pollock, 1895;
new ed. 1898; see also his article English Law in this encyclopaedia),
Domesday Book and Beyond (1897), Township and
Borough (1898), Canon Law in England (1898), English Law
and the Renaissance (1901), the Life of Leslie Stephen (1906),
besides important contributions to the Cambridge Modern
History, the English Historical Review, the Law Quarterly
Review, Harvard Law Review and other publications. His
writings are marked by vigour and vitality of style, as well
as by the highest qualities of the historian who recreates the
past from the original sources; he had no sympathy with either
legal or historical pedantry; and his death at Grand Canary
on the 19th of December 1906 deprived English law and
letters of one of their most scholarly and most inspiring representatives,
notable alike for sweetness of character, acuteness
in criticism, and wisdom in counsel.
See P. Vinogradoff’s article on Maitland in the English Historical Review (1907); Sir F. Pollock’s in the Quarterly Review (1907); G. T. Lapsley’s in The Green Bag (Boston, Mass., 1907); A. L. Smith, F. W. Maitland (1908); H. A. L. Fisher, F. W. Maitland (1910).
MAITLAND, SIR RICHARD (Lord Lethington) (1496–1586),
Scottish lawyer, poet, and collector of Scottish verse,
was born in 1496. His father, Sir William Maitland of
Lethington and Thirlestane, fell at Flodden; his mother was
a daughter of George, Lord Seton. He studied law at the
university of St Andrews, and afterwards in Paris. His castle
at Lethington was burnt by the English in 1549. He was
in 1552 one of the commissioners to settle matters with the
English about the debateable lands. About 1561 he seems to
have lost his sight, but this did not render him incapable of
attending to public business, as he was the same year admitted
an ordinary lord of session with the title of Lord Lethington,
and a member of the privy council; and in 1562 he was appointed
keeper of the Great Seal. He resigned this last office in 1567,
in favour of John, prior of Coldingham, his second son, but
he sat on the bench till he attained his eighty-eighth year.
He died on the 20th of March 1586. His eldest son, by his
wife Mary Cranstoun of Crosbie, was William Maitland (q.v.):
his second son, John (c. 1545–1595), was a lord of session,
and was made a lord of parliament in 1590, with the title of
Lord Maitland of Thirlestane, in which he was succeeded by
his son John, also for some time a lord of session, who was
created earl of Lauderdale in 1624. One of Sir Richard’s
daughters, Margaret, assisted her father in preparing his
collection of old Scots verse.
The poems of Sir Richard Maitland, none of them lengthy, are for the most part satirical, and are principally directed against the social and political abuses of his time. He is chiefly remembered as the industrial collector and preserver of many pieces of Scots poetry. These were copied into two large volumes, one in folio and another in quarto, the former written by himself, and the latter by his daughter. After being in the possession of his descendant the duke of Lauderdale, these volumes were purchased at the sale of the duke’s library by Samuel Pepys, and have since been preserved in the Pepysian Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge. They lay there unnoticed for many years till Bishop Percy published one of the poems in his Reliques of English Poetry. Several of the
