In the selection of specimens from this copious material, Maitland displayed a felicitous strategy the aim of which was to exhibit, as rapidly as might be, the range and versatility of the Society's operations. A sequence of volumes illustrating any one department of law would fatigue attention, warn off subscribers and fail to make the desired impression on the general historical public. It was better to begin upon several different types of record than to work one vein without intermission; better for the cause of science, and a course more likely to bring forward good contributors as well as to stimulate public interest in the undertaking. With a general editor less perfectly equipped such a scheme might have been hazardous; but Maitland was master of the whole field and could be trusted not to fail in proportion and perspective. In swift succession the members of the Selden Society received volumes illustrating Pleas of the Crown, Pleas of Manorial Courts, Civil Pleas, manorial formularies, the Leet jurisdiction of Norwich, Admiralty Pleas; then an edition of the _Mirror of Justice_ followed by a volume on _Bracton and Azo_. Of these first eight volumes Maitland wrote four and contributed a brilliant introduction to a fifth--the edition of the _Mirror_, executed by his pupil and friend Mr W. J. Whittaker. It was an astonishing performance; even had the work been spread over twelve years of robust energy it would still have been astonishing. It was accomplished in half that time by a busy, delicate, University Professor who apart from statutory Professorial lectures was simultaneously engaged in writing the classical _History of English Law_.
Much might be said by qualified persons as to the exquisite technique displayed in Maitland's contributions to the Selden Society. He spared no pains in the examination and collation of manuscripts, and although he modestly disdained expert paleographical knowledge, he need not, we imagine, fear comparison with the most accurate transcribers of medieval documents, or with those who have achieved a special renown for their studies in "diplomatic" or in the affiliation of manuscripts. He possessed other qualities which are not often combined with such a passion and gift for minute scholarship. In the first place he was exceedingly anxious to make his work practically useful and to ease the path for students whose tastes might lead them to attempt similar explorations. He takes the reader into his laboratory and exhibits the whole process of discovery, showing where the difficulties lie, pointing out hopeful lines of enquiry, and providing always a clear chart to the documents, published and unpublished, of his subject. Secondly he combined in an extraordinary measure the gift for hypothesis with the quality of patience. He did not aim at providing sensational or curious results;--"the editor," he writes in the introduction to the first Selden volume, "has not conceived it his duty to hunt for curiosities, the history of law is not a history of curiosities"--he wished for plain truth--to discover the course of medieval justice in all its natural and instructive monotony, in its common forms and in its everyday working garb. "It has been necessary," he writes, referring to his selection of manorial pleas, "to print some matter which in itself is dull and monotonous; a book full of curiosities would be a very unfair representative of what went on in the local courts. We cannot form a true notion of them unless we know how they did their ordinary work, and this we cannot know until we have mastered their common forms." Such a scheme no doubt involves repetition, but there is at least one student of English history who, despite some acquaintance with histories and chronicles, never understood the everyday working of medieval life until he had the good fortune to dive into the publications of the Selden Society.