ceeded in procuring an increase in the salaries of judges; and he devoted much of his time to advocating a reform in the system of criminal punishment. He strongly supported the penitentiary system, and it was mainly owing to him and Eden (Lord Auckland) that the act 19 George III c. 74 was passed.
He died 14 Feb. 1780, and was buried in the parish church of Wallingford, where he had spent much of the latter part of his life. He had married in 1761 Sarah Clitherow, and of his nine children one followed so far in his footsteps as to become a fellow of All Souls, principal of New Inn Hall, Vinerian professor, and assessor in the vice-chancellor's court. Henry Blackstone, the law reporter, was his nephew.
In personal character he ever showed that almost oppressive spirit of orderliness which kept him busy at Oxford, and which exhibited itself throughout his life in habits of scrupulous punctuality. He was both languid and hot-tempered. So languid was he, it is said, that in writing the ‘Commentaries’ he required a bottle of port before him, being ‘invigorated and supported in the fatigue of his great work by a temperate use of it’ (Croker, Boswell, iv. 465); and Lord Stowell, who is the authority for the story, also said that Blackstone was the only man he had ever known who acknowledged and lamented his bad temper. Physically as well as mentally he was lethargic; he grew stout, and came more and more to dislike all forms of exercise, and he seems really to have died from the want of it.
His statue by Bacon, representing him with his right hand on the ‘Commentaries,’ and with Magna Charta in his left, stands in the Codrington Library. His works are:
- ‘Essay on Collateral Consanguinity,’ 1750 (reprinted in ‘Law Tracts’). See the other side of the question put in ‘An Argument in favour of Collateral Consanguinity’ in Wynne's ‘Law Tracts.’
- ‘Analysis of the Laws of England,’ 1754; 6th ed. 1771; 3rd, 4th, and 5th editions contain the discourse on the study of the law (reprinted in ‘Law Tracts’).
- ‘Letter to the Rev. Dr. Randolph, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford,’ 1757.
- ‘Considerations on Copyholders, &c.,’ 1758 (reprinted in ‘Law Tracts’).
- ‘A discourse on the study of the law,’ 1758.
- ‘The Great Charter and Charter of the Forest, with other authentic instruments, to which is prefixed an introductory discourse, containing the history of the Charters,’ 1759 (reprinted in ‘Law Tracts’).
- ‘A treatise on the law of descents in fee-simple,’ 1759.
- ‘Reflections on the opinions of Messrs. Pratt, Morton, and Wilbraham, relating to Lord Leitchfield's disqualifications,’ 1759.
- ‘A case for the opinion of counsel on the right of the university to make new statutes,’ 1759. (For these two pamphlets see life by Clitherow; they are not mentioned elsewhere.)
- ‘Tracts, chiefly relating to the antiquities and laws of England,’ 2 vols. 8vo, 1762 (tracts on collateral consanguinity, copyholders, laws of descent, and a reprint of his Great Charter); 3rd ed. 1771, 1 vol. 4to (same tracts, except that on laws of descent; in addition his ‘Analysis’ and the letter to Dr. Randolph); German translation, 1779.
- ‘Commentaries on the Laws of England,’ 4 vols. Editions: 1st, 1765–9, 4to; 2nd, 1768, 4to (see Lowndes); 3rd, 1768, 4to (the 2nd and 3rd seem to be editions of only vols. i. and ii.); 4th, 1770, 4to; 5th, 1773; 6th, 1774, 4to (Dublin edition, 1775, 12mo); 7th, 1775 (this edition and all the subsequent ones are 8vo); 8th, 1778; 9th (by Burn), 1783; 10th and 11th (Burn and Williams), 1787, 1791; 12th, 13th, 14th, and 15th (Christian), 1793–5, 1800, 1803, 1809 (the 12th edition was published in numbers, with portraits of sages of the law, which were inserted by the bookseller without the editor's sanction); ‘a new edition’ (Archbold), 1811; another edition not numbered (J. Williams), 1822; 16th (Coleridge), 1825; ‘a new edition’ (Chitty), 1826; 17th (‘enlarged and continued by the editor of “Warton's History of English Poetry,”’ Price, 1830); 18th (Lee, Hovenden, and Ryland), 1829; 19th (Hovenden and Ryland), 1836; 20th (adapted by Stewart), 1837–41; 21st (Hargrave, Sweet, Couch, and Welsby), 1844; 22nd (adapted by Stewart), 1844–9; 23rd (adapted by Stewart), 1854. Other adaptations: (by Stephen, ‘partly founded on Blackstone’) 1st ed. 1848–9; 9th ed. 1883; (by Kerr) 1st ed. 1857, 4th ed. 1876; (by Broom and Hadley) 1869. The abridgments and volumes of selections are numerous. Among them are Curry's, 1796 and 1809; Gifford's, 1821; Bayly's, 1840; Warren's, 1855 and 1856. Also ‘The Comic Blackstone,’ by G. A. à Beckett, 1867. The American editions nearly equal in number the English. The first edition is the Philadelphia reprint of 1771–2; the last and best are Sharswood's, 2 vols. 1878, and Cooley's, 2 vols. 1884. There are also American adaptations, including an edition of Broom and Hadley, by Wait (1875), and abridgments, the last being Ewell's (1883). Translations (French): From the 4th ed. by D. G … (de Gomicourt), 6 vols. 1774–6, a translation ‘qui n'est ni exacte ni française’ (Camus, Biblioth. des livres de droit); it omits the notes and references. From the 15th ed. by N. M. Chompré, 6 vols. 1822. ‘Commentaires sur le code criminel,’ by the
