(1723-1780) Legal Writer, posthumous son of a silk mercer in London, was educated at Charterhouse School and Oxford, and entered the Middle Temple in 1741. His great work is his Commentaries on the Laws of England, in 4 volumes (1765-1769), which still remains the best general history of the subject. It had an extraordinary success, and is said to have brought the author £14,000. Blackstone 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.