A Scottish lawyer and author, was born at Monboddo, in Kincardineshire, in 1714, educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen, where he displayed a great fondness for the Greek philosophers, and afterwards studied law for 3 years at Gronigen in Holland. In 1737 he became a member of the Scottish bar, and soon obtained considerable practice; but the first thing that brought him prominently into notice was his connection with the celebrated Douglas case, in which Mr. Burnet acted as counsel for Mr. Douglas. In 1767 he was raised to the bench by the title of lord Monboddo. He died May 26, 1799. Monboddo’s first work, on the “Origin and Progress of Language” (1771–76), is a very learned, heretical, and eccentric production; yet in the midst of its grotesque crotches there occasionally flashes out a wonderfully acute observation, that makes one regret the distorted and misapplied talent of the author. The notion that men have sprung from monkeys, is perhaps that which is most commonly associated with the name of Monboddo, who gravely asserted that the orang-outangs are members of the human species, and that in the bay of Bengal there exists a nation of human creatures with tails, and that we have only worn away ours by sitting on them, but that the stumps may still be felt. Monboddo wrote another work, entitled “Ancient Metaphysics,” which was published only a few weeks before his death.

Personal

  The metaphysical and philological Lord Monboddo breakfasted with us yesterday. He is such an extravagant admirer of the ancients that he scarcely allows the English language to be capable of any excellence, still less the French…. He said we moderns were entirely degenerated. I asked in what? “In everything,” was his answer. “Men are not so tall as they were,—women are not so handsome as they were, nobody can now write a long period, everything dwindles.”… Among much just thinking and some taste, especially in his valuable third volume on “The Origin and Progress of Language,” he entertained some opinions so absurd that they would be hardly credible if he did not deliver them himself, both in writing and conversation, with a gravity which shows that he is in earnest, but which makes the hearer feel that to be grave exceeds all power of face. He is so wedded to system, that, as Lord Barrington said to me the other day, rather than sacrifice his favorite opinion that men were born with tails, he would be contented to wear one himself.

  I was married to the handsomest woman in Scotland, and I believe the best wife in it, with whom I lived most happily seven years. I have been fifteen years a widower, and during all that time I never had the least thought of a second choice, till I saw you at this time in London, so amiable both in mind and person, and your sentiments so much agreeing with mine that I thought, and still think, we are made for one another, and may live most comfortably together. During my widowhood, the affairs of my family have suffered much, chiefly for want of a mother to my children…. I am sure I would make a most loving husband to you, and besides I would propose to be a father to that excellent girl who lives with you and whose admirable genius it would give me the greatest pleasure to cultivate and improve, as I think I could do. Now my dear Mrs. Garrick, tell me if you know any three in Britain that you think would be happier together than we three? And if you pleased, I would add a fourth, my young daughter, who is almost as handsome as her mother, a good figure, a very good disposition, and not defective in genius, particularly in painting.

  The answer I gave you in that moment when you did me the honor of proposing an union between us came from my heart: it was that I never would change my situation; and which you must give me leave to repeat again as a final answer to your letter, I remain, my Lord, Your most obliged and obedient servant.

  Lord Monboddo’s temper was affectionate, friendly and social. He was fond of convivial intercourse; and it was his daily custom to unbend himself, after his professional labours, amidst a select party of literary friends, whom he invited to an early supper. The entertainment itself partook of the costume of the ancients: it had all the variety and abundance of a principal meal; and the master of the feast crowned his wine, like Anacreon, with a garland of roses. His conversation, too, had a race and flavour peculiarly its own: it was nervous, sententious, and tinctured with genuine wit. His apothegms, (or, as his favourite Greeks would rather term them Γγωμαι), were singularly terse and forcible; and the grave manner in which he often conveyed the keenest irony, and the eloquence with which he supported his paradoxical theories, afforded the highest amusement of those truly attic banquets, which will be long remembered by all who had the pleasure of partaking in them.

  Lord Monboddo was a humorist both in private life and in his literary career. He was, says Sir Walter Scott, a gentleman of the most amiable disposition, and of the strictest honour and integrity. He was deeply read in ancient literature, was a devout believer in the virtues of the heroic ages and the deterioration of civilized mankind, and so great a contemner of luxuries that he would never use a wheel carriage. There were several points of similarity between him and Johnson—great learning, clearness of head, precision of speech, and a love of inquiry on subjects which people in general do not investigate. Foote used to call Lord Monboddo “an Elzevir edition of Johnson.”

  In his judicial capacity he showed himself to be both a profound lawyer and an upright judge, and his decisions were free from those paradoxes which so frequently appeared in his writings as well as in his conversation. He was not, however, without peculiarities, even in the court of sessions, for instead of sitting on the bench with his fellow-judges, he always took his seat underneath with the clerks. Nor was he as a rule inclined to agree with his colleagues in their decisions, but was generally in the minority and sometimes alone. Burnett is, however, best known to the world as a man of letters…. In private life Burnett was an amiable, generous, and kind-hearted man. Though in his habit he was exceedingly temperate and lived much according to rule, yet he greatly delighted in the convivial society of his friends.

  Lord Monboddo was known rather for his quaint eccentricities and social humour than for any consummate mastery of the law.

  The venerable figure of Monboddo was every year seen on horseback posting off to London, to visit old friends and delight old circles. At last, however, such expeditions were too fatiguing for his shrivelled old body. He was on his way in 1799 to make his annual visit, but only got as far as Dunbar, where he was taken ill, and forced to undergo the ignominy of being conveyed home in the despised chaise. “Oh, George,” he said plaintively to his nephew, “I find that I am eighty-four.” A few days later, in May, the venerable humorist was dead. Then the world gossiped, according to its fashion, of stories true and false about the old man’s humours—how he used to fancy that the tails of babies were snipped off by midwives at their birth, and how he would watch at the bedroom door when a child was born, in order to detect the relics of a primeval ancestry. Others more worthily recalled memorable nights in his society, his sayings of curious wit, his sallies which set the table in a roar, while perfect gravity reigned on his ugly old face; his pleasant ways, his courtly, old-fashioned manners. They missed the familiar form which had trotted up innumerable stairs to merry suppers—the worn-out old figure they had daily seen standing at the door of Creech’s shop, or pacing the Parliament Close—the owner of a most kindly heart, the author of most unreadable books.

General

  The writings of Lord Monboddo display a profound acquaintance with the philosophy of the ancients, which he has explored with the ardour, and admired perhaps with the prejudices of an enthusiast; but in so far as they relate to criticism and philology, they are valuable monuments of classical taste, and a sound discriminating judgment in the excellencies and defects of rhetorical composition.

  The writings of the eccentric James Burnet, Lord Monboddo, contain interesting passages, such as his theory about the origin of man, and his humorously extravagant defence of the superiority of ancient over modern writers; but the interest is more in the matter than in any felicity or original force of expression.

  I confess that I have felt a deep interest in reading the philosophical works of Lord Monboddo,—he is so unlike any other Scotch metaphysician, he is so unlike his age. As appearing among a body of inductive inquirers, and in the middle of the eighteenth century, he looks very much like a megatherium coming in upon us in the historical period. His society is not with the modern empiricists, not even with the Latins, but with Plato and the Neo-Platonists, with Aristotle and his commentators. As regards the higher Greek philosophy, he is the most erudite scholar that Scotland has produced, not excepting even Sir William Hamilton. He had two great philosophic works…. He dwells with evident fondness on categories or universal forms. All things are to be known by their causes. The knowledge of first causes belongs to metaphysics. Everything that is to be known falls under one or other of the categories. He shows that God must have ideas. Man is capable of forming ideas. Time is not a cause, but is a necessary adjunct or concomitant of the material world.

  A brief reference must suffice to one other thinker of considerable ability, who, in attempting to assail the dominant philosophy, produced at least a literary curiosity. Lord Monboddo, following James Harris, the author of “Hermes,” attempted to revive the Aristotelian philosophy. His six quartos upon “Antient Metaphysics,” and his six octavos upon the progress of language, contain much acute thought amidst huge masses of digression, repetition, and apology for eccentric crochets. His main point is really a criticism of Locke and Hume for their confusion of sensation and perception. He makes many of the criticisms which from this point of view would commend themselves to the metaphysical school of which he professes himself an adherent; but he produced no influence upon thought—partly because his doctrine was an attempt to resuscitate the dead; and even more, perhaps, because it was overlaid with oddities, some of which are remembered when his more serious remarks are forgotten…. Reid and Hartley each founded a school; but Monboddo remained an isolated being, anointing himself according to the fashion of the ancients, growling at the degeneracy of mankind, and regarded by them as a semi-lunatic, outside the sphere of practical influence.