Judge Blackstone— A Poet .
A correspondent in January's Messenger said, that on the death of this great lawyer, poems were unexpectedly found among his papers. The following is the only one of them we have seen. Its smooth yet vigorous numbers, its simply touching strain of thought and language, the deep and just feeling it evinces, and the apt felicity of its imagery, prove the author to have possessed a genius which, had it been so inclined, might have rendered him as conspicuous in the flowery paths of elegant literature, as he actually became in the sterner walks of the law. There is something strikingly magnanimous in the self-denial, which could make such a mind relinquish pursuits so congenial to its tastes and so meet for its abilities, for a profession the most abounding of all others in dry, ponderous, and perplexing drudgery, yet amongst the most vital to the well-being of society. What a lesson to our dilettanti, who, even after having adopted that profession, cannot bravely face and grapple with its difficulties, but remain entranced by the Circean draughts and Syren songs of the lightest and most frivolous of the Muses! What should be their humiliation, when they compare their own inability to renounce the novel, the newspaper, and the frothy magazine, with Blackstone's generous farewell to his so far noble muse? They may rest assured, that it is only to one capable of such a sacrifice, that Lord Coke's parting wish is not addressed in vain: "I wish unto him the gladsome light of Jurisprudence, the lovelinesse of temperance, the stabilitie of fortitude, and the soliditie of justice."
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