Chapter M’Lennan to Mair of M by Biographical Dictionary of English Literature

then came to London, and became a leading contributor to Fraser’s Magazine, under the signature of “Father Prout.” He was witty and learned in many languages. One form which his humour took was the professed discovery of the originals in Latin, Greek, or mediæval French of popular modern poems and songs. Many of these jeux d’esprit were collected as Reliques of Father Prout. He wittily described himself as “an Irish potato seasoned with Attic salt.” Latterly he acted as foreign correspondent to various newspapers, and died at Paris reconciled to the Church.

Maine, Sir Henry James Sumner (1822-1888).—Jurist, educated at Christ’s Hospital and at Cambridge, where he became Regius Professor of Civil Law 1847-54. Called to the Bar in 1850, he went in 1862 to India as legal member of the Government. On his return he was in 1870 appointed Professor of Comparative Jurisprudence at Oxford, which office he held until his election in 1878 as Master of Trinity Hall. He became Whewell Professor of International Law at Cambridge in 1887, and was the author of many valuable works on law and the history of political institutions, and profoundly influenced the study of jurisprudence. Among his writings are Ancient Law (1861), Village Communities (1871), Early History of Institutions (1875), and Dissertations on Early Law and Customs (1883).

Mair, or, Major, John (1469?-1550).—Historian, studied at Cambridge and Paris, was the teacher of John Knox and George Buchanan. In 1506 he was a Doctor of the Sorbonne, and in 1519 became Professor of Divinity at St. Andrews. He wrote, in Latin, treatises on divinity and morals, and a History of Greater Britain, in which the separate histories of England and Scotland were brought together, published at Paris (1521). In his writings, while upholding the doctrinal teaching of Rome, he was outspoken in condemning the corruptions of the clergy.