The next man who took in hand a book somewhat similar to that undertaken by Blackstone was Sir Henry Maine. He achieved a great measure of success. He stimulated in a way which it was difficult for anyone to realise who had not read Maine's _Ancient Law_ when it first appeared, public interest in law and jurisprudence. He gave to the English world a new view of the possibilities of interest possessed by the study of law. But his success is not complete. He did not show, as did Maitland, that even the most crabbed details of English law might be made part of English literature. The reason why Maine cannot in this matter stand on the same level with Maitland is that he did not possess the qualifications for the third and last of Maitland's great achievements. No one can say that profound learning was possessed by either Blackstone or Sir Henry Maine. But Maitland was a learned historian as well as a learned lawyer. He therefore could and did demonstrate that extraordinary learning and research have no connection whatever with dullness and pedantry, and that learning may be combined with the most philosophic and the profoundest views of law which the mind of man can form[34]." This sketch will have been written in vain if it fails to suggest that the world lost in Maitland not only a great and original scholar but also a nature of singular charm and beauty. The life of severe scholarship may, and perhaps often does, dry up the fountains of sympathy, but this was not the case with Maitland. The current of his affections ran deep and strong, and so easily was his enthusiasm fired that he would praise the books of young authors with a delight which seemed almost unqualified if they happened to contain any real merit. No one was more entirely free from self-importance or from any desire to defend, after they had become untenable, positions which he had once been inclined to maintain. He possessed a gift which is far rarer than it is generally supposed to be, and is often very imperfectly possessed by learned men, an intense and disinterested passion for truth, a passion so pure that he would speak with genuine enthusiasm of such criticisms of his own work as he judged to be well founded and to constitute a positive addition to knowledge. His modesty, both in speech and writing, was so extreme that it might have been put down to affectation; but it was an integral part of the temper which made him great in scholarship. He saw the vast hive of science and the infinite garden of things, and knew how little the most busy life could add to the store; and so, living always in the company of large projects and measuring himself by the highest standard of that which is obtainable in knowledge, he viewed his own acquisitions as a small thing--a fragment of light won from a shoreless ocean of darkness.