BLACK STONE, SIR WILLIAM (1723-1780)

—Legal Writer, posthumous s. of a silk mercer in London, was ed. at Charter house School and Oxf., and entered the Middle Temple in 1741. His great work is his Commentaries on the Laws of England , in 4 vols. (1765-1769), which still remains the best general history of the subject. It had an extraordinary succe , and is said to have brought the author £14,000. B. was not a man of original mind, nor was he a profound lawyer; but he wrote an excellent style, clear and dignified, which brings his great work within the category of general literature. He had also a turn for neat and polished verse, of which he gave proof in The Lawyer's Farewell to his Muse .