|
Editor's Note—This page contains information about James Muirhead, Professor of Civil Law in the University of Edinburgh (1862 - 1889), and his library. General information about the Muirhead Collection Catalogue is given immediately below. Then follows the Preface to the catalogue by Christian F. Verbeke. Last, an Essay on James Muirhead by John Cairns, Professor of Legal History in the University of Edinburgh, is made available for reading or downloading.
General information
THE MUIRHEAD COLLECTION CATALOGUE. Part One James Muirhead, Teacher, Scholar, Book-Collector. By John W. Cairns. Part Two Owens College Library catalogue, Class V. Legal Sciences [This portion of the Library includes the Muirhead Law Library]. With a Preface by Christian F. Verbeke. Brussels : Belgian Bibliographic Commission, 1999. 8vo, pp. xviii, 32, 133, front., illus. Bound in flexible printed paper boards. Bibliographia Belgica 146 ISBN 2 930016 04 3. Price 900 Belgian Fr./Eur 22,31 + post.
Orders to : Mireille Vanlaecken, Hon. Treasurer, Commission Belge de Bibliographie et de Bibliologie asbl, Rue du Centre 10, B-6670 Gouvy, Belgium. Tel. +32 80510464 - Fax +32 80510465 - e-mail : chriverb@skynet.be.
Preface to the Catalogue by Christian F. Verbeke
In November 1988 I received a telephone call from my late friend Peter Eaton of Lilies, who asked me whether I was interested in seeing a rather largish collection of law books, the name of Muirhead being mentioned during the conversation. Some time before and entirely fortuitously, I had acquired Muirhead's Historical Introduction to the Private Law of Rome, (1899) in which no reference was made to a collection of Roman private law formed by the author. Before setting off to Lilies I had searched Moelwyn I. Williams' Directory, (1985) in the vain hope of finding a reference to this collection.
At Lilies, an imposing Victorian mansion, my inspection of the collection was greatly facilitated as the books had been temporarily shelved in the enormous cellar-kitchen: my first impression was one of awe, and after the most cursory glance my conviction was that here was a collection which had survived almost by miracle. Total candour having always been central in our relations, the Eatons spontaneously informed me that the collection came originally from Owens College, Manchester University and confirmed that apparently the books had been deaccessed probably some sixty years earlier and that they had found them stored in the vicinity of the [previously coal-fired] central heating boiler room. Involuntarily, my mind drifted off to Michael Innes' ominous sally in Old Hall, New Hall: 'The Jory collection was in the basement, in the small room next to the boiler'…
 |
| | William Hole's portrait of James Muirhead | | |
First impressions were confirmed, but it became equally clear that long exposure to dry heat in an unventilated basement had produced serious deterioration of all the leather-bound books. In contrast, the books bound in patterned paste boards, in a style popular in Germany from the 1820's to 1860's, had survived admirably. Pebbled and patterned cloth bindings of various hues, and their terracotta endpapers also had fared reasonably well. It was also my impression that a certain number of these works had been very little read, other than by their original owner perhaps, judging by the freshness of both bindings and text. The standard texts in contrast had been literally consulted to annihilation. At the time of this writing several hundreds of titles still await rebinding.
Although no systematic bibliography as such was compiled to accompany his Historical Introduction to the Private Law of Rome (a not unusual practice in contemporaneous law publishing), Muirhead does in fact give us an explanation for the work's approach: 'the plan and execution might have been somewhat different had an independent volume been in contemplation from the first': indeed in its original format the work appeared as the article on Roman law in the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, (1875-1889). The Introductory chapter 'Abbreviations in references to literature', pp. xxi-xxv, op. cit., and the copious bibliographical footnotes dispersed in the text, offer a clear insight into the contents of the collection. Owens College Library, Manchester published the Catalogue of the Owens college library. Class V. Legal Sciences [… includes the Muirhead Law Library], 1894, after the acquisition of the collection.
The intrinsic importance of the collection formed by Muirhead is demonstrated by his encyclopedic knowledge of antiquarian legal materials, reflected in the diversity of the collection of some 1800 titles, and approximately 700 legal dissertations by the legal nineteenth century German, French, Dutch and Italian authors on Roman private law. The fact that by modern standards of legal research Muirhead's work is dated in no way diminishes the importance of his collection, a subject amply covered by Dr. Cairns.
The acerbic Fritz Schulz in his History of Roman legal science, (1946) had failed to make any mention of Muirhead's existence, limiting himself to the sibylline 'because I do not mention a work, the reader must not infer that I am unacquainted with it' and concludes: 'omnium habere memoriam et penitus in nullo peccare divinitatis magis quam mortalitatis est.' David Walker in his Oxford Companion to Law (1980) had not given Muirhead a notice, although he included Henry Goudy, Muirhead's later editor. An observation which goes also for the 11th edition of the Britannica.
In the ensuing years, after the collection was safely housed on my premises, what I have chosen to call 'my quest for Muirhead' (a title subconsciously cribbed from A.J.A. Symons' Quest for Corvo?), continued sporadically. It is not my intention to present here an apologia for the reasons that in appearance my interest in Muirhead waned between 1990 and 1996. Professional obligations, the compilation of two Belgian law bibliographies and my contribution of three chapters, Belgium, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the Netherlands to Information sources in law, 2nd ed. conspired to deprive me of time and opportunity.
In 1989 I had posted in one of my law catalogues the following query: 'Suggestions, inquiries or correspondence about the James Muirhead Collection of Roman private law are invited,' an appeal which, to my great disappointment, was to remain entirely unanswered. Late in 1996 I had a renewed glimmer of hope to be able to complete my scant sources of information on Muirhead when by accident I discovered in an English bibliography catalogue a curious entry: The Owens college, Notes on the Library, By the Librarian, (1891). On reading the Notes, my hopes were dashed, as J.T. Kay, the college's librarian merely announced: 'It is also hoped to secure the very valuable Law library of the late Professor [James] Muirhead, of Edinburgh University, numbering 2,100 volumes.'
In 1997 I addressed an exhaustive Muirhead query to IusRomanum@jurix.jura.uni-sb.de, a list for scholarly discussion of Roman law, including the development of Ius Commune and the formation of European private law, this inquiry also proved fruitless. In the Spring of 1997 through fortuitous circumstances I entered into contact with Dr. John W. Cairns, to inquire about the possible existence of Muirhead archives at the University of Edinburgh Law Faculty. During one conversation with Dr. Cairns, it transpired that he had been unable to trace Muirhead archives or papers, a situation similar to the one encountered at Manchester University. What surfaced however, serendipity displayed, was that Dr. Cairns had written the James Muirhead entry for the New D.N.B. I was also to learn that there was no copy of the Muirhead Law Library catalogue in the University of Edinburgh library.
The question can legitimately be asked why my obsessive and all-consuming interest in a relatively obscure late Victorian Scottish legal author? Only an hybrid and, yes, subjective set of answers, can partially resolve the question: when I acquired the Muirhead collection I was already deeply conscious and alarmed at the turn of events in institutional reference book collection dispersals, both in England and on the Continent and, to a lesser extent, the U.S.A. It must be remembered that the onslaught on U.K. library budgets, documented ad nauseam in the pages of the Library Association's Record of the last decade, which resulted in wholesale liquidations of institutional and regional reference collections, had barely begun.
I realised that once the dispersal of the Muirhead books was completed, no record of the collection would remain readily accessible. At the very least, if the some two thousand Muirhead titles could not be digitalized, the catalogue itself could. Dr. Cairns accepted the Belgian Bibliographical Commission's offer to write an entirely new introduction to the Muirhead Catalogue, and by mid-July 1997 he was able to assure me that his own quest had led to startling discoveries about Muirhead which gave an entirely new dimension to the man's professional and personal life. It is useful to remember that the catalogue of the Muirhead collection is a nondescript piece of printing, even when judged by the most modest standards of victorian book production. The paper is of poor quality, the drab brown printed paper covers completed by a narrow ribbon cloth spine, were clearly not meant to withstand extensive use or draw attention to the importance or intrinsic worth of the collection.
On Thursday, 20 Nov. 1997, John Cairns sent me the following communication : 'You may be interested to learn that not all of Muirhead's books went to the Owens College Library. I have just this afternoon discovered that some were bought by the Advocates'Library in Edinburgh—only two works, in all three volumes, as well as the MS bought by Edinburgh University Library.'
Dr. Cairns' arduous researches shall likely lead to a renewal of interest in Muirhead who emerges as a complex and fascinating human being and legal scholar, and as an enlightened and imaginative collector of Roman private law books. And if we merely succeed in drawing the attention of the legal history community to his collection, I think then that the purpose of this modest reprint of the Muirhead catalogue will have been amply fulfilled.
Chrtistian F. Verbeke.
Winter, 1997
'James Muirhead, Teacher, Scholar, Book-Collector'
This essay by John Cairns is available for reading online or for downloading. If you wish to download the essay you will require Microsoft Reader®, which is available for free from Microsoft.
|
