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BLA Probably there is not a treatise mentioned in the whole Bibliography of the common law, about which a greater contrariety of opinion has existed than of Blackstone's Commentaries. Soon after their publication the controversy began, and from that time to the present these volumes, on the one hand, have been most acrimoniously and unjustly criticised, and on the other inordinately and injudiciously praised. Impertinent and unfair criticism will no more guide us to a proper opinion of the value of a production, than over zealous and indiscriminate praise. Did we believe the former, Blackstone is an immethodical, uninformed writer, without invention, incapable of reasoning, whose Commentaries " contain somewhat which is not law upon almost every page." Did we believe the latter, his Commentaries are unsurpassed models of method, precision and clearness, which should be perused iterum aique iterum. All are, however, agreed, that they are written in a nervous, elegant and pellucid style, models of legal purity of diction. Before the time of Sir Matthew Hale, the Common Law was con- sidered as incapable of system, by reason, it was said, " of the indi- gestedness of it, and the multiplicity of the cases ;" but Hale was not of this opinion, and by his Analysis fully showed how capable the subject was of method and system. On this foundation Blackstone built his immortal work. The following are some of the opinions of writers upon the merits and demerits of the Commentaries : "The method observed by Blackstone, in his far too celebrated Com- mentaries, is a slavish and blundering copy of the very imperfect method which Hale delineated roughly in his short and unfinished Analysis. From the outset to the end of his Commentaries, he blindly adopts the mistakes of his rude and compendious model ; missing invariably, with a nice and surprising infelicity, the pregnant but obscure suggestions which it proffered to his attention, and which would have guided a dis- cerning and inventive writer to an arrangement comparatively just. Neither in the general conception nor in the detail of his book, is there a single particle of original and discriminating thought. He had read somewhat, (though far less than is commonly believed,) but he had swallowed the matter of his readinw without choice and without rumi- nation." Austin's Outline of a Course of Lectures, G3. Mr. Ritso is of the opinion, that real disservice has been done the author by the indiscriminate, injudicious praise of his admirers. " Per- haps no professional writer has suffered more in this instance from the zeal of injudicious admirers than Blackstone, in his celebrated Com- mentaries. They were not designed for students at law, but for students at the University ; they were not addressed to professional but to unpro- fessional readers. He was not a lecturer of an Inn of Court, but a, Uni- versity professor — not to inform lawyers, but to render the law intelligible to the uninformed minds of beginners. Addressing himself to persons 124