845. BLACKSTONE (Sir William), Commentaries.—
The exclusion from the
courts of the malign influence of all authorities
after the Georgium Sidus became ascendant,
would uncanonize Blackstone,
whose book, although the most elegant and
best digested of our law catalogue, has been
perverted, more than all others, to the degeneracy
of legal science. A student finds
there a smattering of everything, and his
indolence easily persuades him that if he
understands that book, he is master of the
whole body of the law. The distinction between
these, and those who have drawn their
stores from the deep and rich mines of Coke
on Littleton, seems well understood even by
the unlettered common people, who apply
the appellation of Blackstone lawyers to
these ephemeral insects of the law.—
To Judge Tyler. Washington ed. vi, 66.
(M.
1812)
