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THE

MONTHLY REVIEW,

For JULY, 1782.

ART. 1. Reports of Cafes determined in the feveral Courts of Weftminter Hall from 1746 to 1779. Taken and compiled by the Honourable Sir William Blackftone, late one of the Juftices of his Majefty's Court of Common Pleas. Published, according to the Direction in his Will, from the Original Manufcript, by his Execu tors. With a Preface containing Memoirs of his Life. Folio. 2 Vols. 31. 3 s. Cadell. 1781.

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THE general tafte that prevails for biographical writings will no doubt be gratified by the account, prefixed to this work, of fo refpectable a perfonage as the late Sir William Blackftone. The acknowledged merit of his Commentaries on the Laws of England not only clafs him among the benefactors to his own profeffion, but likewife raife him high in the fcale of literary eminence. Our Readers will therefore not be difpleafed, if, inftead of confining ourselves to the legal character of thefe Reports, we lay before them fome particulars of his life. Mr. Clitherow is well enabled, by his friendship and relation to the learned Author, to undertake the part of his biographer and if he appears now and then to be unneceffarily minute, or if, under the influence of affection, ftill lively from a recent lofs, he is fomewhat prodigal of his panegyric, the feverity of criticifm can fcarcely cenfure a failing fo natural, and proceeding from fo amiable a caufe.

'Mr. Blackstone was born on the 10th of July, 1723, in Cheapfide, in the parish of St. Michael le Querne, at the houfe of his father, Mr. Charles Blackftone, a filk man, and citizen and bowyer of London; who was the third fon of Mr. John Blackstone, an eminent

* Brother-in-law of the late Sir William Blackstone, VOL. LXVII.

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apothecary in Newgate-street, defcended from a family of that name in the weft of England, at or near Salisbury: his mother was Mary, eldest daughter of Lovelace Bigg, Efq; of Chilton Foliot in Wiltshire.

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He was the youngest of four children; of whom John died an infant, Charles the eldeft, and Henry the third, were educated at Winchester school, under the care of their uncle Dr. Bigg, warden of that fociety, and were afterwards both fellows of New College Oxford; Charles is ftill living, a fellow of Winchester, and rector of Wimering in Hampshire: Henry, after having practifed phyfick for fome years, went into holy orders, and died in 1778, rector of Adderbury in Oxfordshire, a living in the gift of New College.

Their father died fome months before the birth of William, the fubject of these memoirs; and their mother died before he was twelve years old.

The being thus early in life deprived of both parents, an event generally deemed the greatest misfortune that can befal a child, proved in its confequences to him the very reverfe: to that circumtance probably he was indebted for his future advancement, and that high literary character and reputation in his profeffion which he has left behind him; to that circumstance the public too is probably indebted for the benefit it has received, and will receive, as long as the law of England remains, from the labours of his pen.

6 For had his father lived, it is most likely that the third son of a London tradefman, not of great affluence, would have been bred in the fame line of life, and thofe parts, which have fo much fignalized the poffeffor of them, would have been loft in a warehouse or behind a counter.

But, even from his birth, the care both of his education and fortune was kindly undertaken by his maternal uncle Mr. Thomas Bigg, an eminent furgeon in London, and afterwards, on the death of his elder brothers, owner of the Chilton eftate, which is fill enjoyed by that family.

The affectionate, it may be faid the parental, care this worthy man took of all his nephews, particularly in giving them liberal educations, fupplied the great lofs they had fo early fuftained, and compenfated in a great degree for their want of more ample fortunes. And it was always remembered, and often mentioned by them all with the fincereft gratitude.

In 1730, being about feven years old, he was put to school at the Charter-Houfe, and in 1735 was, by the nomination of Sir Robert Walpole, on the recommendation of Charles Wither of Hall in Hampshire, Efq; his coufin by the mother's fide, admitted upon the foundation there.

In this excellent feminary he applied himself to every branch. of youthful education, with the fame affiduity which accompanied his ftudies through life. His talents and induftry rendered him the favourite of his mafters, who encouraged and affifted him with the utmost attention; that at the age of fifteen he was at the head of the school, and, although so young, was thought well qualified to be removed to the university; and he was accordingly entered a com

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moner at Pembroke college in Oxford, on the 30th of November 1738, and was the next day matriculated.

At this time he was elected to one of the Charter-House exhibitions by the governors of that foundation, to commence from the Michaelmas preceding; but was permitted to continue a scholar there till after the 12th of December, being the anniverfary commemoration of the founder, to give him an opportunity of fpeaking the customary oration, which he had prepared, and which did him much credit.

About this time alfo he obtained Mr. Benfon's gold prize medal of Milton, for yerfes on that poet.

Thus, before he quitted fchool, did his genius begin to appear, and receive public marks of approbation and reward. And fo well. pleafed was the fociety of Pembroke college with their young pupil, that, in the February following, they unanimously elected him to one of Lady Holford's exhibitions for Charter-Houfe fcholars in that houfe.

Here he profecuted his fludies with unremitting ardour; and although the claffics, and particularly the Greek and Roman poets were his favourites, they did not entirely engrofs his attention: logic, mathematicks, and the other fciences were not neglected; from the first of thefe (ftudied rationally, abftracted from the jargon of the fchools) he laid the foundation of that clofe method of reafoning he was fo remarkable for; and from the mathematicks, he not only reaped the benefit of ufing his mind to a clofe investigation of every fubject that occurred to him, till he arrived at the degree of demonftration the nature of it would admit; but he converted that dry study, as it is ufually thought, into an amufement, by pursuing the branch of it which relates to architecture.

This science he was peculiarly fond of, and made himself fo far matter of it, that at the early age of twenty, he compiled a treatise, intituled, Elements of Architecture,' intended for his own use only, and not for publication, but efteemed by thofe judges who have perufed it, in no refpect unworthy his maturer judgment, and more exercised pen.

Having determined on his future plan of life, and made choice of the law for his profeflion, he was entered in the Middle Temple on the 20th of November 1741. He now found it neceffary to quit the more amusing purfuits of his youth, for the feverer ftudies to which he had dedicated himfeif; and betook himfeif feriously to reading law.

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How difagreeable a change this must have been to a young man of brilliant parts, and a fine imagination, glowing with all the claffical and poetical beauties he had ftored his mind with, is eafier conceived than expreffed: he alone, who felt, could defcribe his fenfations on that occafion; which he did in a copy of verles, fince published by Dodfley in the 4th volume of his miscellanies, intituled, The Lawyer's Farewel to bis Mafe; in which the struggle of his mind is expreffed fo ftrongly, fo naturally, with fuch elegance of fenfe and language, and harmony of verification, as mult convince every reader, that his paffion for the mufes was too deeply rooted to be laid alde without much rela&tance, and that, if he had pursued that

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that flowery path, he would not perhaps have proved inferior to the beft of our English poets.

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Several little fugitive pieces, befides this, have at times been communicated by him to his friends, and he has left (but not with a view of publication) a fmall collection of juvenile pieces, both originals and tranflations, which do him no difcredit, intcribed with this line from Horace,

Nec lufiffe puder, fed non incidere ludum.

Some notes on Shakespeare, which jutt before his death he communicated to Mr. Steevens, and which were inferted by him in his last edition of that author, fhew how well he understood the meaning, as well as the beauties, of that his favourite among the English poets.

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In November 1743 he was elected into the fociety of All-Souls College; and in the November following, he spoke the anniversary fpeech in commemoration of archbishop Chicheley the founder, and the other benefactors to that houfe of learning, and was admitted actual fellow.

From this period he divided his time between the university and the Temple, where he took chambers in order to attend the courts: in the former he purfued his academical ftudies, and on the 12th of June 1745, commenced batchelor of civil law; in the latter he applied himfelf clofely to his profeffion, both in the hall, and in his private ftudies, and on the 28th of Noven.ber 1746 was called to the bar.

The first years of a counsel's attendance on the courts afford little matter proper to be inferted in a narrative of this kind; and he in particular, not being happy in a graceful delivery or a flow of elocution (both which he much wanted), nor having any powerful friends or connexions to recommend him, made his way very flowly, and acquired little notice and little practice; yet he then began to lay in that ftore of knowledge in the law, which he has fince communicated to the world, and contracted an acquaintance with feveral of the most eminent men in that profeffion, who faw through the then intervening cloud, that great genius, which afterwards broke forth with fo much fplendor.'

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All this is very handsomely, and, we doubt not, very truly faid; but we fee nothing that calls for any extraordinary notes of admiration; or that may not be faid with equal propriety of many young men of parts and application, as well in the law as in other profeffions, who are condemned to languish in obicurity till time and chance, which happen to all men,' happen to them. The Obfervation on the train of events that reicued Mr. Blackstone from the purfuit of a mercantile line of life is fuperficial at leaft, if not fallacious; and is to far dangerous, as it implics, that a man of abilities may not be highly useful to his country in that line (which in a commercial country, we prelume, will hardly be admitted); or as it may difpofe young men of abilities, who are destined for a commercial life, to repine that they were not educated for the learned profelions. It might perhaps oc

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cur, that a man like Mr. Blackftone, (who is faid to have much wanted a graceful delivery and a flow of elocution,') had miftaken his profeffion, in chufing that of a Pleader at the Bar: and when we afterwards find him in two fucceffive parliaments an almoft undiftinguifhed fenator, we are tempted to enquire by what fate it happened that the fame brilliancy of parts,' which, if cultivated, we are told, would probably have raised him to an equality with our beft Englith poets, and that Genius, which, though long obfcured with envious clouds, broke out at last with so much splendor,' fo totally deferted him in the British fenate;-the nobleft field for abilities that this country or any modern ftate prefents to men of talents. Is the old maxim no longer just? Orator fit, poëta nafcitur.

The reputation of Sir William Blackftone refts on a folid bafis: but it may be injured by lavith and injudicious praife. In forming a just estimate of a man's abilities, we must not measure them by himself alone. We ought to compare him with the scenes in which he acts, with the opportunities he has to exert himfelf, and with his contemporaries in his own profeffion. As a pleader, as a fenator, and as a judge, Sir William Blackstone was certainly refpectable; but not the greatest of his time. As a writer on the fubject of Law, he ftands highly dif tinguished. Where men of the firft abilities were his competitors, and the greatness of the prize called forth the greatest exertions, we fee him relinquishing the palm to others, and deviating into the paths of literature; and though we may commend the wifdom of his choice, we have no right to extol it as an evidence of the greatnefs of his powers.

It has been often lamented, that men of great profeffional abilities have feldom leifure to write on general fubjects; and that those who are moft capable of inftructing mankind, are too much engaged in the hurry of bufinefs to attempt any great work. Hence the law is more difgraced by wretched compilations than any other science; and hence fuch a writer as Blackftone is an acquifition truly valuable. It is his great merit, that he has taught the law to wear a liberal drefs, and has divested it, as far as poffible, of the unintelligible jargon with which it was loaded and difgraced. An ingenious lawyer does not fcruple to pronounce his Commentaries" the most correct and beautiful outline ever exhibited of any human fcience *." This praise however is not wholly Blackstone's. It must be remembered, that the arrangement of the greateft part is taken from Lord Hales's Analyfis, which had likewife been adopted by Wood, in his Inftitutes of the Law of England,-a work of confiderable merit,

• Effay on the Law of Bailments, by William Jones, Efq.

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