He left behind him seven children: Henry, James, William, Charles, Sarah, Mary, and Philippa; the eldest only sixteen years of age. Henry Blackstone, the reporter, was his nephew, and died from the effects of over exertion in his profession. Of his sons, James enjoyed nearly the same University preferments as his father: he was Fellow of All Souls, Principal of New Inn Hall, Vinerian Professor, Deputy High Steward, and Assessor in the Vice-Chancellor's Court. He died in 1831, having resigned the Assessorship in 1812, and the Vinerian Professorship in 1824. The chief characteristics of Blackstone appear to have been prudence and industry; we perceive him calmly and gradually working his way from obscurity to eminence, undeterred by disappointment or neglect. He never abandoned a good possessed for a contingent benefit; thus, when he found his chance of advancement at the bar less than it was at the University, he went to settle at Oxford; still, however, persevering in professional pursuits. He did not venture to enter into the blissful estate of matrimony (although he was a man domestically inclined) until he found he could safely dispense with his fellowship: and he preferred the less prominent, but more secure, station of a puisne judge of the Common Pleas, to the slippery path of a political advocate. His mind was rather discerning than vigorous, calculated rather to form a judgment on and explain existing things, than to strike into a new path and boldly advance an original theory. He shrank from controversy, and sought rather to instruct the ignorant than to dispute with the learned. Thus it was that he excelled in delivering lectures from the professor's chair, but did not so well succeed in forensic arguments or political debates. When he had considered a question, he could elegantly and lucidly state and explain his opinion; but he could not readily answer an unanticipated objection, or retort upon a contumelious adversary. There could hardly have been a mind better constituted for the judgment-seat,too cautious to abandon precedents, and too clear to misapply them. Cool and deliberate, he was not likely to be misled by a fallacy, nor to decide on a hasty impression: and we cannot but think that Blackstone is not reckoned amongst our first judicial characters, only because he did not occupy the most eminent station. It may be inferred from what has been said, that he was no enthusiast either in religion or in politics; in the former he was a sincere believer in Christianity, from a profound investigation of its evidences; in the latter he was what would be now called a Conservative, friendly to a mild but authoritative government, inimical to the agitations of pretended patriots. In private life we are told he was an agreeable and facetious companion, tender and affectionate as a husband, father, and friend; strict in the discharge of every relative duty: towards strangers he was reserved, which to some appeared to proceed from pride. His temper was rather remarkable for irritability, which in his latter years was increased by his bodily infirmities. There may have been more shining characters, of whom we read with deeper interest, but there have been few men more useful in their sphere, few whose example we can contemplate more profitably, few who better realised the wish so happily expressed by himself : : "Untainted by the guilty bribe, Uncursed amidst the harpy tribe; 352 LORD BATHURST. THE author of certain "Strictures" on the lives of the eminent lawyers of his time (published in 1790) introduces his notice of Lord Bathurst in the following terms:-"We may boldly write down, that the Earl of Bathurst became a great character perforce; he was nursed in a political hot-bed, and raised per fas et nefas. Nothing less than the same necessity introduces his Lordship's name in the same page with those illustrious personages, which it is the purpose of this volume to portray." Without admitting the justice of such unqualified depreciation as this, it cannot be denied that the personal qualities of the noble lord, either as a lawyer or a statesman, would hardly of themselves have invested him with any claim to posthumous commemoration. But the attainment of the Great Seal, the object of all a lawyer's hope and veneration, of itself entitles its possessor to a place among the worthies of the profession, and to a niche, though none of the most conspicuous, in our gallery of legal dignitaries. The family of Bathurst is one of very considerable antiquity. According to Jacob, its ancestors were originally settled in the principality of Luneburg, at a place called Batters, whence they bore that name; and some of them passing into England, in the tenth century, established themselves near Battle, in Sussex, and gave their residence the name of Batters' Hurst-that is, Batters' Grove,-which was afterwards abridged into Bathurst. In the course of the dissensions between the houses of York and Lancaster, Lawrence Bathurst, the then representative of the family (whose father had been killed at the battle of St. Albans, fighting in the ranks of the Lancasterians), was deprived of this property in Sussex, which was annexed by the crown to Battle Abbey. He retained, however, lands in Staplehurst, Canterbury, and elsewhere in the county of Kent, which he had acquired by his successful industry in the woollen manufacture, in those ages the staple trade of the Weald of Kent, and to which many of the long-descended gentry of that county-the Ongleys, the Courthopes, the Maplesdons, &c. &c.- are indebted for their first advance to wealth and consequence. George Bathurst, the third in descent from this Lawrence, was the father of several children, of whom the celebrated wit and scholar, Dr. Ralph Bathurst, president of Trinity College, Oxford, was the eldest; and the youngest was Benjamin, who became, in the reign of Charles II., Governor of the East India and African companies, attained the honour of knighthood, and filled the office of treasurer in the household of Queen Anne, when Princess of Denmark. By his wife Frances, the daughter of Sir Allen Apsley of Apsley in Sussex, Falconer to Charles II., Sir Benjamin had several children, the eldest of whom was Allen, afterwards created, in Queen Anne's celebrated batch of Tory peers, Lord Bathurst of Battlesden, in Bedfordshire. Of him, the convivial intimate of Pope and Swift, and of all the brilliant circle of that Augustan age of literature, it is superfluous to speak to any reader to whom the literary history of their time is not altogether a sealed book. In Parliament, a fluent and impassioned speaker, a skilful and practised debater, he maintained an unabated opposition to the government of Sir Robert Walpole during the whole of his long monarchy of power, and was regarded as one of the chief champions of Toryism in the House of Lords. In private life, amiable, benevolent, affectionate, convivial, and witty, he endeared himself to a circle of friends, larger and more distinguished for eminence of every kind than it falls to the lot of many men, of whatever rank, to have conciliated. His seat of Oakley Grove, near Cirencester, adorned by his taste with extensive and beautiful plantations, which he lived long enough to see matured into noble woods, beheld partakers of its hospitality the noble, the witty, and the learned of successive generations. Sterne gives an interesting account of his introduction to him in his old age:-" He came up to me A A one day, as I was at the Prince of Wales's Court;-I want to know you, Mr. Sterne; but it is fit that you should know also who it is that wishes that pleasure. You have heard of an old Lord Bathurst, of whom your Popes and Swifts have sung and spoken so much. I have lived my life with geniuses of that cast, but have survived them; and despairing ever to find their equals, it is some years since I have cleared my accounts, and shut up my books, with thoughts of never opening them again. But you have kindled a desire in me of opening them once more before I die, which now I do; so go home and dine with me.' This nobleman, I say, is a prodigy; for at eighty-five he has all the wit and promptness of a man of thirty; a disposition to be pleased, and a power to please others, beyond whatever I knew; added to which, a man of learning, courtesy, and feeling." He did indeed live long enough to survive all the illustrious associates of his early manhood, but he lived also to enjoy the rare fortune of seeing his son presiding over the dignified assembly in which he had himself achieved so much distinction,-a fortune which none but the father of Sir Thomas More had known before him,—and to receive at the hands of that son the patent of an earldom*. The magnificent passage, in which Burke applied this signal instance of worldly felicity to illustrate the eloquent arguments so vainly reiterated against a blind and fatal perseverance in misgovernment, often as it has been admired and quoted, is too apposite to our subject to be omitted here. "The growth of our national prosperity," said the orator, in his speech on the conciliation of America, "has happened within the short period of the life of man. It has happened within sixty-eight years. There are those alive whose memory might touch the two extremities. For instance, my Lord Bathurst might remember all the stages of the progress. He was in 1704 of an age at least to be made to comprehend such things. He was then old enough acta parentum jam legere, et quæ sit poterit cognoscere virtus. Suppose, Sir, that the angel of this auspicious youth, foreseeing the many virtues which made him one of the most amiable, as he is one of the most fortunate, men of his age, had opened to him in vision, that when, in the * He was created, in 1772, Earl Bathurst, of Bathurst, in the county of Sussex. |