Scottish philosopher, born at Kames in Berwickshire, was called to the bar in 1723, and raised to the bench as Lord Kames in 1752. Besides books on Scots law, he published “Essays on Morality” (1751), “An Introduction to the Art of Thinking” (1761), “Elements of Criticism” (his best-known work, 1762), and “Sketches of the History of Man” (1774).

Personal

  Lord Kames and Mrs. Drummond, his wife, came from Edinburgh, which is an hundred miles from Denton, on purpose to spend a few days with me. His lordship is a prodigy. At eighty-three he is as gay and as nimble as he was at twenty-five. His sight, hearing, and memory perfect. He has a great deal of knowledge and a lively imagination, and is a most entertaining companion. I have promised to return his visit two years hence. I think as he has not grown old in the space of eighty-three years, two years more cannot have much effect. If it should abate a little of his vivacity, he would still have enough left.

  He received from nature an extraordinary activity of mind, to which his multiplied occupations allowed no remission, even in his advanced age; we find him as indefatigable in his eightieth year, as in the most vigorous and ambitious season of his life. The versatility of his talents were accompanied by a strength and acuteness, which penetrated to the essence of the subjects to which they were applied. The intentions with which he prosecuted such a wide diversity of studies, appear often excellent; very few men so ingenious, so speculative, so systematic, and occasionally so fanciful, have kept practical utility so generally in view. The great influence which he exerted over some of the younger philosophers of the time, several of the most distinguished of whom were proud to acknowledge themselves his pupils, was employed to determine their speculations to useful purposes. His conduct in the office of judge appears to have impressed every impartial man that witnessed it, with an invariable opinion of his talents and integrity. As a domestic and social man, his character was that of frankness, good humour, and extreme vivacity. His prompt intelligence continually played around him, and threw its rays on every subject that even casualty could introduce into conversation.

  Lord Kames was in his person extremely tall, and of a thin and slender make. In his latter years, he had a considerable stoop in his gait; but when in the vigour of life, and particularly when in his dress of a barrister, his appearance is said to have been uncommonly becoming. His countenance, though not handsome, was animated and intelligent, and was strongly marked by that benignity of disposition which was a prominent feature of his mind. In ordinary discourse, his accent and pronunciation were like those of the better educated of his countrymen of the last age. The tone was not displeasing from its vulgarity; and though the idiom, and frequently the phrases, were peculiar to the Scottish dialect, his language was universally intelligible…. A strong feature of Lord Kames’s disposition, was an artless simplicity and ingenuity, which led him at all times to express without reserve both his feelings and his opinions. This propensity gave frequently an appearance of bluntness of manner, which was apt to impress a stranger unfavourably, as erring against those lesser proprieties of behaviour, so necessary in the commerce of the world. But this impression was momentary; the same frankness of nature displayed at once both the defect and its cause: it laid open the integrity of his character, and that perfect candour, which judging always most favourably of others, was unconscious of harbouring a thought which required concealment or disguise.

  Sceptical as we may well be of any high estimate of his mental calibre, he was a characteristic figure in his day, and accentuates many of its traits by exaggeration and by travesty. He represented all the indomitable energy of the race, and its persevering struggle against odds. When he attained to the dignity of the Bench, the long tension brought a reaction, and he turned with zest to the pursuits of what he deemed elegant literature and lofty speculation, undeterred by any consciousness of the limitations of his early training…. As was often the case with his countrymen, he relieved the long restraint of toil by indulgence in antics that frequently fell to the ridiculous, and cultivated with assiduity the reputation of a wit, which degenerated not rarely into the indecency of the buffoon, and suffered the restraints neither of dignity nor of good taste…. He was not a great lawyer; he was in no sense a philosopher; his literary taste was frequently perverse; his political speculations were whimsical and often absurd; his wit had often much of boyish mischief, asserting itself against the restraints of authority, and never rose to the serenity of humour. But in his indomitable energy, in his industry, in his freedom from timidity or any bashfulness bred of his own defects, he was characteristic of his age.

General

  In my passage to America, I read your excellent work, the “Elements of Criticism,” in which I found great entertainment: much to admire, and nothing to reprove. I only wish you had examined more fully the subject of Music, and demonstrated, that the pleasure which artists feel in hearing much of that composed in the modern taste, is not the natural pleasure arising from melody or harmony of sounds, but of the same kind with the pleasure we feel on seeing the surprising feats of tumblers and rope-dancers, who execute difficult things.

  Among Mr. Hume’s numerous disciples, I do not know one who ever read his “Treatise on Human Nature.” In order, therefore, to be read, you must not be satisfied with reasoning with justness and perspicuity; you must write with pathos, with elegance, with spirit, and endeavour to warm the imagination, and touch the heart of those who are deaf to the voice of reason…. What has made Lord Kames’s “Elements of Criticism” so popular in England, is his numerous illustrations and quotations from Shakespeare. If his book had wanted these illustrations, or if they had been taken from ancient or foreign authors, it would not have been so generally read in England.

  He had too much liberality of mind not to allow to others the same liberty in judging which he claimed to himself. It is difficult to say, whether that worthy man was more eminent in active life or in speculation. Very rare surely have been the instances where the talents for both were united in so eminent a degree. His genius and industry, in many different branches of literature, will, by his works, be known to posterity. His private virtues and public spirit, his assiduity through a long and laborious life in many honourable public offices with which he was entrusted, and his zeal to encourage and promote every thing that tended to the improvement of his country, in laws, literature, commerce, manufactures, and agriculture, are best known to his friends and contemporaries.

  The “Historical Law Tracts” of Lord Kames are conducted upon a very judicious system of investigating the natural principles of some of the most important objects of judicial science, and tracing the application of them in the Laws of Rome, of Scotland, and of England; but a comparison between the Laws of Scotland and England, conducted, I think, with great fairness, is apparently the leading object of the undertaking.

  The “Elements of Criticism,” considered as the first systematical attempt to investigate the metaphysical principles of the fine arts, possesses, in spite of its numerous defects both in point of taste and philosophy, infinite merits, and will ever be regarded as a literary wonder by those who know how small a portion of his time it was possible for the author to allot to the composition of it, amidst the imperious and multifarious duties of a most active and useful life.

  His works are generally all an awkward compound of ingenuity and absurdity, and in this volume [“Essays on the Principles of Morality”] the latter quality, it appears to me, considerably preponderates. It is metaphysical—upon Belief, Identity, Necessity, etc. I devoutly wish that no friend of mine may ever come to study it, unless he wish to learn,

  His diction is tolerably copious, and his turns of expression often have something of the crisp ingenuity of Hume’s, but his sentences are not very skilfully put together; his style wants flow. Curiously enough, his analysis of the mechanical artifices of sentence-making is one of the most substantial parts of his “Elements;” it supplied both Campbell and Blair with all that they have to say on sentence-mechanism, and contains some ingenuities that they did not see fit to adopt.

  In the present day, if Lord Kames is read at all, it is for his ingenious and acute speculation into the sources of æsthetic pleasure.

  Kames was an ingenious and voluminous writer, with a considerable knowledge of law and a great taste for metaphysics. His style, however, is crabbed and wanting in variety, while his learning is frequently superficial and inaccurate.

  Lord Kames was a man whose words have been voiceless to any generation beyond his own. Even by his own friends his speculations can hardly have carried real weight, however indulgently they were treated as the efforts—earnest enough in their way—of an acute and ingenious, but ill-trained and ill-balanced intellect.