Appendix CASE ONE - Collection Point® | The Total Digital Asset ...

212 Legal History in the Making
historian Vasily Kluchevsky, the German Romanist Theodor Mommsen and
that master of the history of the English common law, Frederick William
Maitland. In Vinogradoff s own words Vasily Kluchevsky was, 'a product of
mysterious forces hidden in the very centre of the Russian plains, for he was
the son of a poor village priest'. He was 'sensitive, concentrated, endowed
with the artistic genius of a painter, a kind of Rembrandt, revealing the
essence of historical character and movements by a combination of intuition
and keen criticism'. Mommsen was 'the eagle with his piercing look, a man of
devouring industry who gathered all the shreds of evidence as to the past of
Rome and made them part of his personal life'. Of Maitland he said that he
was 'almost uncanny in the triumph of his mighty mind over weakness of his
body, impatient of unproved assumption and hasty generalization, carrying
the practical sense of the common law into the past and illumining the past
with the flame of his quaint humour' 2 One may say that to him these three
great historians were the best personifications of the vocation of the scientific
historian.
Here it may be pointed out that, by his own confession, Vinogradoff's
inclination towards the study of English law and society was related to certain
peculiarities of English life which in his opinion always appealed strongly to
the interest of foreign observers, notably the rule of law and the manly spirit
of freedom. In his inaugural lecture delivered in Corpus Christi College in
the University of Oxford on 1 March 1904 he said, 'Like so many others I
began by studying political institutions, but was insensibly led to inquiries as
to legal and social history. This brought me into contact with some of the
best representatives of English thought and learning and more especially with
the Oxford intellectual centre'. 3 When he himself started teaching in Oxford
one of the most influential teachers and authorities there was Henry Sumner
Maine. Of him he said: 4
His was one of those minds which radiate far beyond their immediate surroundings:
the whole of my generation of students of law and history have had to deal directly or
indirectly with the ideas propagated by him or similar to his. ... [he was] a scholar,
who before all strove to be a thinker; a lawyer, who was more interested in the
origins of legal rules than in the rules themselves; a man of the world, who brought
all the resources of his shrewd common sense to the investigation of antiquarian
problems; a sociologist, who never dealt in names nor played with words.
In relation to Maine as a leader of legal thought he made the very profound
and just observation that:'. . . such a leader always personifies in his life and
work, with more or less individual colouring, some combination of the aims
and ideas of his time'. 5
2
Quoted by H.A.L. Fisher in the memoir which he prefaced to The Collected Papers of Paul
Vinogradoff (Oxford, 1928; rptd. London, 1964), i, 70.
3
The Teaching of Sir Henry Maine', Law Quart. Rev., xx (1904), 119; Collected Papers, ii, 173.
4 Ibid., 119-20; 174.
5 Ibid., 120; 174.