564 



BLACKSTONE. 



Blackmorc, a nd diabetes. He died on the 8th of October 1729, 

 Blackstone . ail j man if es t e d the most elevated piety during his last 

 ^ illness. 



Few authors have been more severely satirised than 

 Sir Richard Blackmore ; and his name has been too 

 readily associated, upon the authority of his enemies, 

 with the essence of absurdity and dulness. He must 

 be admitted, indeed, to have been justly obnoxious to 

 ridicule, ou account of his tedioushistorical epic poems; 

 to have written too hastily and carelessly ; to have 

 been extremely negligent in correcting and polishing 

 his compositions ; and to have, in many instances, dis- 

 covered extraordinary deficiency in point of true taste ; 

 hut he was far from deserving that extreme contempt 

 with which he has been treated, and was by no means 

 destitute of ability, learning, or even of poetical genius. 

 Some of his keenest opponents have acknowledged, 

 that his poems possess a certain degree of merit, and 

 deserve a considerable portion of applause ; and many 

 eminent literary characters, Mr Duncotnbe, Mr Ad- 

 dison, Mr Locke, Mr Molyneux, and Dr Watts, have 

 spoken of his works, especially of his poem oh Crea- 

 tion, in termsof high approbation. There is too good 

 reason to believe, that it was his religion more than his 

 dulness which excited much of the animosity which 

 he sustained, and that he incurred such bitter attacks 

 from his contemporaries chiefly by his censures of 

 their immorality and profaneness. But, whatever be- 

 comes of his fame as an author, there can be no dis- 

 pute on the subject of his personal character. He 

 was always a most zealous advocate for the interests 

 of religion and virtue ; was distinguished by the fer- 

 vent piety and moral excellency of his own life ; and, 

 while his numerous enemies were unable to attach the 

 slightest moral stain to his memory, his acquaintances 

 and friends have highly extolled his private virtues. 

 See Biog, Britan. Gen. Biog. Johnson's Lives of 

 the Poets. Spectator, No. 339. Watt's Horm Ly- 

 rica, Preface. Locke's Works, vol. iii. p. 568. Dun- 

 combe's Coll. of Letters, vol. i. p. 121. &c. (q) 



BLACKSTONE, Sir Wiixiam, an English 

 lawyer of great celebrity, was born at London on 

 the 10th of July 1723. He was the third son of 

 Charles Blackstone, a silk mercer ; but, being left 

 an orphan, the charge of his education was gene- 

 rously undertaken by his maternal uncle, Thomas 

 Biggs, a surgeon in London. At an early age he 

 was sent to the Charter-house school, and was some 

 yeacs afterwards admitted a scholar on the founda- 

 tion. In November 1738, he was entered at Pem- 

 broke College, Oxford. At both these seminaries 

 he distinguished himself by his proficiency in classi- 

 cal learning. His attainments do not, however, seem 

 to have been circumscribed by the ordinary limits of 

 academical discipline : At the age of twenty, he 

 composed, for his own use, an elementary treatise 

 on architecture, which was never published, but 

 which is said to possess great merit. Having deter- 

 mined to embrace the profession of the law, he en- 

 tered himself of the Middle Temple ; and, in 1744, 

 he quitted Oxford, and those classical pursuits which 

 were so congenial to his taste. This transition, to 

 studies of a less pleasing nature, he very feelingly 

 -Commemorated in an elegant poem, entitled, The 

 Lau-ifcr's Farewell to his Muse, which was after- 



wards printed in the 4th volume of Dodsley's collec- Black-tone 

 tion, and which is allowed to display a very early v ~"" V "* 

 maturity of taste and judgment. He now applied 

 himself with great assiduity to the studies of his pro- 

 fession ; dividing his residence between the Temple, 

 and the university, a place to which he always re- 

 tained his youthful attachment. He had been elect- 

 ed a fellow of All-souls College in 1713 ; and, on 

 the 28th of November 1746, he was called to the 

 bar. As he was very deficient in elocution, and pos- 

 sessed none of the popular talents of an advocate, 

 his progress in the profession was extremely slow ; 

 and, being without any avocations of business, the 

 active turn of his mind displayed itself in the office 

 of bursar, or steward, of All-souls. In this situa- 

 tion he is said to have merited great praise for his 

 skill and diligence in arranging the records and im- 

 proving the revenues of the college, and in expedi- 

 ting the necessary measures for completing the mag- 

 nificent structure of the Codrington library. In 

 1749, he Was appointed, through the interest of a 

 relation, recorder of Wallingford in Berkshire ; and, 

 in the following year, probably with a view to more 

 constant residence at Oxford, he took the degree of 

 doctor of laws. 



After Blackstone had attended the courts at West- 

 minster for a period of seven years, his prospect of 

 Success was so extremely precarious, that he deter- 

 mined to quit the regular practice of his profession, 

 and retire to his fellowship. To this determination 

 he was indebted for the future distinctions of his life. 

 " The system of education in the English universi- 

 ties," says a very intelligent biographer, " having 

 been established in remote ages, and intended solely 

 for the instruction of the Popish clergy, was with- 

 out any public provision for teaching the laws and 

 constitution of their own country ; and, from that 

 mixture of pride and indolence, which is the charac- 

 teristic of ancient and wealthy establishments, the 

 defect was suffered to continue after the universities 

 had ceased to be appropriated to ecclesiastics, and 

 had become places of general education. This de- 

 fect Mr Blackstone now undertook to supply by & 

 course of public lectures on that important subject ; 

 and the manner in which he executed the task, has 

 conferred great and lasting distinction on the univer- 

 sity in which his lectures were delivered. It is in- 

 deed a singular circumstance, and may be of some 

 use in enabling us to appreciate the merit of our 

 academical establishments, that, in the long succes- 

 sion of public teachers and professors, during a pe- 

 riod of several centuries, the Commentaries of Black- 

 stone, and the Hebrew Prelections of Lowth, are 

 the only series of lectures in either university which 

 have any prospect of descending to posterity, or of 

 acquiring a permanent place in the literature of their 

 country." 



Blackstone commenced his first course of lectures 

 in Michaelmas term 1753 ; and they continued to be 

 repeated, during a series of years, with great and 

 increasing reputation. It was probably the success 

 of this attempt, that suggested to Mr Viner the 

 plan of endowing, by his will, a liberal establish- 

 ment in the university of Oxford for the study of the 

 municipal law. In October 1758, Dr Blackstone 



