Born at London, July 10, 1723: died at London, Feb. 14, 1780. A celebrated English jurist, appointed Vinerian professor of common law at Oxford in 1758, and Justice in the Court of Common Pleas in 1770. His chief work is “Commentaries on the Laws of England” (1765–68). Eight editions appeared in the author’s lifetime, and for sixty years after his death they followed in quick succession. These editions were edited and annotated by Coleridge, Chitty, Christian, and others. An American edition was printed in 1884, but the text has not been reprinted in England since 1844. There are various adaptations of it for modern use.
Personal
If I were personally your enemy, I should dwell with a malignant pleasure upon those great and useful qualities you certainly possess, and by which you once acquired, though they could not preserve to you, the respect and esteem of your country. I should enumerate the honours you have lost, and the virtues you have disgraced; but, having no private resentments to gratify, I think it sufficient to have given my opinion of your public conduct, leaving the punishment it deserves to your closet and to yourself.
He was a believer in the great truths of Christianity, from a thorough investigation of its evidence: attached to the church of England from conviction of its excellence, his principles were those of its genuine members, enlarged and tolerant. His religion was pure and unaffected, and his attendance on its public duties regular, and those duties always performed with seriousness and devotion.
Sir William Blackstone, as Sir. Wm. Scott of the Commons observed to me a few days ago, was extremely irritable. He was the only man, my informant said, he had ever known who acknowledged and lamented his bad temper. He was an accomplished man in very various departments of science, with a store of general knowledge. He was particularly fond of architecture, and had written upon that subject. The notes which he gave me on Shakspeare show him to have been a man of excellent taste and accuracy, and a good critick. The total sum which he made by his “Commentaries,” including the profits of his lectures, the sale of the books while he kept the copyright in his own hands, and the final sale of the proprietorship to Mr. Cadell, amounted to fourteen thousand pounds. Probably the bookseller in twenty years from the time of that sale will clear ten thousand pounds by his bargain, and the book proved to be an estate to his heirs.
Judge Blackstone composed his “Commentaries” (he was a poet too in his youth) with a bottle of port before him.
The private character of Sir William Blackstone is represented in very favourable colours by his biographer, but seems to have been misunderstood by those who did not enjoy an intimate acquaintance with him. His appearance was not prepossessing. The heaviness of his features and figure, and the contraction of his brow, gave a character of moroseness to his countenance which did not exist in fact. He was not, however, free from occasional irritation of temper, which was increased by the nervous complaints to which he was subject. In his own family he was cheerful, agreeable, and even facetious, and a diligent observer of those economical arrangements upon which so much of the respectability and comfort of life depends. The disposal of his time was so skilfully managed, that, though he was a laborious student, he freely mingled in the amusements and relaxations of society. This he effected by his rigid punctuality.
A formal, precise, and affected lecturer—just what you would expect from the character of his writings; cold, reserved, and wary—exhibiting a frigid pride.
The politician and the judge are forgotten now, and only the commentator remains. But his life was consistent throughout. He had a reverence for authority and a respect for formalities; his mind turned more readily to apology than to criticism; and destitute of ideals he lived in a narrow groove, contented with himself and the world. When he and Serjeant Nares were calling for the expulsion of Wilkes because he was a blasphemer, Burke described their arguments as “solid, substantial, roast-beef reasoning.” The phrase paints to the life the worshipper of the constitution, who staked the fate of England upon trial by jury.
Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1765–68
Correct, elegant, unembarrassed, ornamented, the style is such as could scarce fail to recommend a work still more vitious in point of matter to the multitude of readers. He it is, in short, who, first of all institutional writers, has taught jurisprudence to speak the language of the scholar and the gentleman; put a polish upon that rugged science; cleansed her from the dust and cobwebs of the office: and if he has not enriched her with that precision which is drawn only from the sterling treasury of the sciences, has decked her out, however, to advantage, from the toilet of classical erudition; enlivened her with metaphors and allusions; and sent her abroad in some measure to instruct, and in still greater measure to entertain, the most miscellaneous, and even the most fastidious, societies. The merit to which, as much perhaps as to any, the work stands indebted for its reputation, is the enchanting harmony of its numbers; a kind of merit that of itself is sufficient to give a certain degree of celebrity to a work devoid of every other. So much is man governed by the ear.
I recommend the “Commentaries” of Blackstone as a general book. The intention of that ingenious writer was to give a comprehensive outline; and when we consider the multiplicity of doctrine which he embraced, the civil, the criminal, the theoretical and practical branches of the law, we must confess the hand of a master. But in the minutiæ he is frequently, very frequently, inaccurate. He should, therefore, be read with caution. The student, in reading him, will often require explanation from him whose duty it is to instruct.
I suppose you will now go in earnest to law. I do not know much of the matter, but I suspect that a regular attendance (and with attention) to the courts, is still more important than any reading whatever; you, of course, read Blackstone over and over again; and if so, pray tell me whether you agree with me in thinking his style of English the very best among our modern writers; always easy and intelligible; far more correct than Hume, and less studied and made up than Robertson.
Of Blackstone’s Commentaries it would be presumptuous in us to attempt an eulogium, after Sir William Jones has pronounced it to be the most beautiful outline that was ever given of any science. Nothing can exceed the luminous arrangement, the vast comprehension, and, we may venture to add from the best authorities, the legal accuracy of this wonderful performance, which, in style and composition, is distinguished by an unaffected grace, a majestic simplicity, which can only be eclipsed by the splendour of its higher qualities.
Perhaps no professional writer has suffered more from the zeal of injudicious admirers than Blackstone in his celebrated “Commentaries.” They were not designed for students at law, but for students at the University; they were not addressed to professional, but to unprofessional, readers. He was not a lecturer of an Inn of Court, but a University professor—not to inform lawyers, but to render the law intelligible to the uninformed minds of beginners. Addressing himself to persons of this description, like an experienced actor, he accommodated himself to the temper and character of his audience, rather for effect than with a view to demonstrate. Like the gnomon upon the sun-dial, he takes no account of any hours but the serene. A man may read Blackstone’s “Commentaries” from one end to the other, and yet have no notion that a proposition in law is as capable of being resolved and demonstrated as a proposition in mathematics. In the rank of elementary composition they might forever have reposed beneath undisturbed laurels: but he who would make them tire institute of his professional education imprudently forces them into an element which is not their own, and lays the foundation for those perilous misunderstandings—that unlawyer-like, jejune smattering, which informs without enlightening, and leaves its deluded votary at once profoundly ignorant and contented.
Blackstone—a great master of classical and harmonious composition, but a feeble reasoner, and a confused thinker.
Good authority. The “Commentaries” are still quoted, and as frequently as ever in the Courts of Law and Equity; if possible, with increased respect for the value of Blackstone’s opinions, and of the evidence which his pages afford, of the former state of the law.
When we reflect upon the vastness and complication of our legislative and executive system, and the thousand elements, Roman, mediæval, municipal, feudal, and parliamentary, which combine to form that wonderful compound, the British constitution, it is impossible to express too warmly the gratitude which not only every Englishman, but every civilized man, should feel towards Blackstone for having placed, in an intelligible and accessible form, the history of what can never be devoid either of philosophical interest, or influence upon the destinies of human liberty.
I have followed your advice, and I have read, or rather re-read, Blackstone. I studied him twenty years ago. Each time he has made upon me the same impression. Now, as then, I have ventured to consider him (if one may say so without blasphemy) an inferior writer, without liberality of mind or depth of judgment; in short, a commentator and a lawyer, not what we understand by the words jurisconsulte and publiciste. He has, too, in a degree which is sometimes amusing, a mania for admiring all that was done in ancient times, and for attributing to them all that is good in his own. I am inclined to think that, if he had had to write, not on the institutions, but on the products of England, he would have discovered that beer was first made from grapes, and that the hop is the fruit of the vine—rather a degenerate product, it is true, of the wisdom of our ancestors, but as such worthy of respect. It is impossible to imagine an excess more opposite to that of his contemporaries in France, for whom it was enough that a thing was old for it to be bad.
There are men in the prime of life who fancy that Sir William Blackstone must have been the intensest of the Old-World “fogies,” in a state of preternatural dryness, and that he was always to be found in the same place, writing heavy treatises on Law, and making interminable extracts from musty authors, dryer, if possible, than himself; that he was in short a machine, which when he died had only run down, and could have been made to go for ever with an occasional winding. This is the absurdest idea of all. There are men—I do not fear to say it—who have read every page of Blackstone’s “Commentaries,” and are now living. They never speak of the feat as a thing extraordinary, and seem even to have formed something of an attachment for their author, and profess to admire his style. These men have never been charged with insanity, and with moderate care will be certain to escape the horrors of the strait-jacket.
What Lyttleton and his crabbed expositor were to our legal ancestors, Blackstone is to modern students: and though some of the more earnest or more ambitious of them may seek honours by endeavouring to fathom the mysteries of the “Tenures,” the οἱ πολλοί of the profession are content to earn an easy degree by mastering the more attractive lessons conveyed in the “Commentaries.” So popular have they become, that, where the study was confined in former times to those who pursued it as an avocation, few men of rank or fortune now consider their education complete without gaining an insight into the constitution of the country through Blackstone’s easy and perspicuous pages; and abridgments are even introduced into schools for the instruction of the young.
He never knew the civil law otherwise than superficially, and frequently states it inaccurately; and even in English law his work is not more remarkable for original research than for the singular skill which it shows in making a happy use of the labours of previous text-writers.
I have not hesitated to speak plainly of the defects and limitations of Blackstone’s works…. I have dwelt, at what may be thought needless length, upon the mistake in his definition of law, and on the relation between law and rights, because the most important change in our science within the last century seems to me to be that by which we have got rid of the notion of law as essentially a command, obedience or disobedience to which makes rights and wrongs, and substituted for it the conception of human rights and duties…. Much of the work done by the so-called school of analytical jurists in England, I believe to have been in the wrong direction, leading farther away from the true sense of law, as we now understand it, than Blackstone’s own view.
Nowhere, it is said, has the chief work of Sir William Blackstone been more widely read than in America…. Blackstone was not without his critics, who remarked upon some disproportion in the parts of his great work, which closes with a chapter on the rise, progress and gradual improvements of the laws of England, suggesting to Reeves the utility of a history of English law, filled up with some minuteness upon the outline thus drawn. Thomas Jefferson questioned the wisdom of Blackstone’s plan of smoothing the path of the student of law. He was also opposed to citing English authorities after the declaration of independence, and is reported to have said that to exclude them would be “to uncanonize Blackstone, whose book, although the most eloquent and best digested of our law catalogues, has been perverted more than all others to the degeneracy of legal science; a student finds there is a smattering of everything, and his indolence easily persuades him that if he understands that book he is master of the whole body of the law.”
General
An early taste for literature has too often misled the student from the ruder and more rugged paths of his profession; but the taste and genius of Blackstone rendered his literary acquirements subservient to his professional success…. The acquirements of Sir William Blackstone as a scholar were, doubtless, very considerable. He had always been in the habit of employing much of his time in reading, and, possessing a powerful memory, with a mind very capable of arranging its stores, he was remarkable for the variety and extent of his information. It is to be regretted that he never applied himself to any undertaking of a purely literary nature, in which there can be little doubt that he would have been eminently successful.
Of his “History of the Charters” it is in vain to attempt any abridgment; for such is the precision of his taste, and such the importance of the subject, that there is not a sentence in the composition that is not necessary to the whole, and that should not be perused. Whatever other works may be read slightly, or omitted, this is one the entire meditation of which can in no respect be dispensed with. The claims which it has on our attention are of no common nature. The labour which this eminent lawyer has bestowed on the subject is sufficiently evident.
His copy of octosyllabics, entitled “The Lawyer’s Farewell to his Muse,” is one of the best minor poems of the time, and suggests that so skilful a versifier might have taken his place with the professional lyrists.
