B L A 



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B L A 



Black&tonr, add, with great success ; for, if their chastisement 

 BUckwell. did not extort a C andiJ acknowledgment of his er- 

 rors, it at least produced a silent retrenchment, in 

 the subsequent editions, of the more obnoxious pas- 

 sages. His political principles were still more se- 

 verely exposed, in an acute production entitled A 

 Fragment on Government, written by Jeremy Ben- 

 tham, Esq. It has been mentioned, to the honour 

 of Blackstone, that, notwithstanding the severity of 

 this criticism, he, some years afterwards, l^fcame ac- 

 quainted with the author, and lived wRxi him on 

 terms of friendship and regard. 



He was likewise involved in a controversy respec- 

 ting the famous case of the Middlesex election. In 

 the House of Commons, he gave it as his opinion, 

 that an expelled member was not eligible to the same 

 parliament ; and this doctrine appearing to contra- 

 dict the language of his Commentaries, he was keenly 

 exposed for his inconsistency by the celebrated Ju- 

 nius, and by other writers of inferior distinction. 

 On this occasion he certainly defended himself with 

 great ingenuity : but his subsequent conduct added 

 considerable weight to the charge which had been 

 preferred against him ; for, in the next edition of 

 his work, he inserted the case of expulsion, of which 

 no previous notice had been taken, among the dis- 

 qualifications to sit in parliament. 



Blackstone's real merits, and, what is generally of 

 greater consequence, his servile devotion to the mi- 

 nistry, were not suffered to pass unrewarded. On 

 the resignation of Mr Dunning in 1770, he was of- 

 fered the situation of solicitor general, which natu- 

 rally leads to the highest offices of the law ; and, on 

 his declining it, he was appointed one of the justices 

 of the court of common pleas. In this honourable 

 and tranquil station he continued till the time of his 

 death, which happened, in consequence of a dropsy, 

 on the 14th of February 1780. His health, which 

 had been considerably impaired by the labours of his 

 early years, by an unfortunate aversion from exer- 

 cise, and perhaps by some habits of excess, had been 

 declining for some time ; but it had begun seri- 

 ously to fail towards the latter end of the preceding 

 year. 



The private character of Blackstone seems to have 

 been highly estimable for mildness, benevolence, and 

 every social and domestic virtue. A love of business, 

 and useful employment, was one of the ruling pas- 

 sions of his life ; and the leisure which he enjoyed 

 during his latter years, was devoted to schemes of 

 social improvement in the neighbourhood where he 

 resided, or to great public undertakings. He left, 

 in manuscript, two volumes of reports, which have 

 been published since his death, but without adding 

 much to his reputation as a lawyer. See Life f Black- 

 alone, prefixed to his Reports; and Aikiu's General 

 Jiiography, vol. ii. p. 177. (c) 



BLACKWELL, Thomas, was born in Aber- 

 deen in the year 1701, and was the son of the Rev. 

 Thomas Blackwell, one of the ministers, and princi- 

 pal of Marischal College in that city. He received 

 his grammatical and university education in his native 

 place, and took the degree of master of arts in the 

 seventeenth year of his age. In the year 172.'!, he 

 was appointed professor of Greek in the MunschaJ 



College, of which he was also made principal in the BlackwtU. 

 year 1748 ; and is the only layman who has been ad- - v ' 

 vanced to that office since the patronage fell to the 

 crown, by the forfeiture of the Marischal family in 

 171b". He still retained his Greek class, which lie 

 continued to teach with great assiduity and success 

 till within a few years of his death ; and in 1752 he 

 received the degree of doctor of laws. In the latter 

 part of his life he was afflicted with a consumptive 

 disorder, which he is supposed to have greatly ag- 

 gravated by his obstinate perseverance in excessive 

 abstemiousness. It was recommended to him to tra- 

 vel for the benefit of his health, and, in February 

 1757, he set out from Aberdeen for that purpose; 

 but he was unable to proceed farther than the city of 

 Edinburgh, where he died in March following, in the 

 56th year of his age. Dr Blackwell's literary pro- 

 ductions were, An Inquiry into the Life and Writings 

 of Homer, published in 1735; a work of little me- 

 thod, but of great ingenuity and learning ; A Key 

 to the inquiry, published in 1736, containing a trans- 

 lation of the numerous Greek, Latin, Spanish, Ita- 

 lian, and French notes in the original work ; Letters 

 concerning Mythology, published in 1748 ; a very 

 miscellaneous and desultory composition, but full of 

 erudition and fancy, and containing a variety of in- 

 teresting details; Memoirs of the Court of Augus- 

 tus, of which the first volume appeared in 1753, the 

 second in 1755, and the third, which was posthumous 

 and incomplete, in 1764 ; a book which is written 

 with great parade of language and peculiarity of 

 style, but which contains an immense fund of curious 

 information. In all the productions of Dr Black- 

 well, there is a very considerable dash of pedantry 

 and affectation, which gradually increased with hi* 

 years ; but it is a pedantry of a very peculiar descrip- 

 tion, and is an attempt at once to display the erudi- 

 tion of a scholar, and to write with the polite case of 

 a gentleman. He was well acquainted with all the 

 ancient, and with most of the modern languages, 

 and had also read very extensively in the departments 

 of history and the belles lettres ; but he was too 

 much inclined to assume the appearance of universal 

 knowledge, and frequently exposed himself by at- 

 tempting discussions in philosophy and mathematics, 

 in which his attainments were very defective. He 

 discharged his duties as a public teacher with great 

 diligence, and merited applause. He commanded the 

 attention of his students by the dignity of his address ; 

 enforced application by a steady exaction of the pre- 

 scribed exercises j excited an ardour of study by his 

 own enthusiasm for the beauties of the ancients ; com- 

 municated much accurate classical learning by his per- 

 spicuous and engaging manner of teaching ; diffused 

 particularly a keener relish for Grecian erudition ; and 

 may justly be regarded as having principally contri- 

 buted to the future eminence of such men as Camp- 

 bell, Gerard, Reid, Beattie, Duncan, and the two 

 Fordyces. He possessed an eqtjable flow of spirits, 

 an entire command of his passions, a great fund of 

 good humour, and a considerable degree of ease and 

 politeness in his manners. In his private life he was 

 studious and retired, seldom entering into mixed com- 

 panies, and choosing the conversation chiefly of men 

 of learning and of superior rank to himself. He was 



