BLACKSTONE’S “Commentaries” are the work of an essayist of the first rank. It is true that his greatness as a jurist and historian of law obscures the high literary quality of his work; but constantly throughout the “Commentaries,” in handling single topics of universal interest, he shows the artistic sense of the unities from which the essay derives a characteristic vitality such as no mere disquisition, however valid for its own purpose, can have. An essay must be as much an artistic whole as a poem. It must have the beginning, the middle, and the end, each in harmony with the other, as Aristotle insists, so that it will represent artistic completeness. Wherever one of Blackstone’s essays occur in his “Commentaries,” it shows these characteristics to such an extent that the student who masters Blackstone must necessarily learn the principles of literature as well as of law. The first volume of the “Commentaries” appeared in 1765, the last in 1768. Though the completed work has always been regarded as the bulwark of the English aristocratic idea of government, Blackstone was no friend of despotism in any form. He was born in London, July 10th, 1723. In 1758 he became Vinerian professor of Common Law at Oxford, and in 1770 Justice of the Court of Common Pleas. He died February 14th, 1780. Eight editions of his great work appeared during his lifetime. Without doubt, its study by one generation of lawyers after another constitutes the closest bond of political sympathy between England and the United States.