Parlirmcnt House.] LORDS MONBODDO, KAMES, AND HAILES 171
ministration of certain medicines ; but the famer
went beyond these, and mixed in it a considerable
quantity of treacle. As the horse died next
morning, Lord Monboddo raised a prosecution for
its value, and pleaded his own cause at the Bar.
He lost the case, and was so enraged against his
brother judges that he never afterwards sat with
them on the Bench, but underneath, among the
clerks. This case was both a remarkable and illl
amusing one, from the mass of Roman law quoted
on the occasion.
Though hated and despised by his brethren for
his oddities, Lord Monboddo was one of the most
learned and upright judges of his time. ?His
philosophy,? says Sir Walter Scott, ?as is well
known, was of a fanciful and somewhat fantastic
character ; but his learning was deep, and he possessed
a singular power of eloquence, which re-
,,mhded the hearer of the os ro&ndum of the Grove
or Academe. Enthusiastically partial to classical
habits, his entertainments were always given in the
evening, when there was a circulation of excellent
Bordeaux, in flasks garlanded with roses, which
were also strewed on the table, after the manner
Qf Horace.?
The best society in Edinburgh was always ?ta be
found at his house, St John?s Street, Canongate.
His youngest daughter, a lady of amiable disposition
and of surpassing beauty, which Burns
panegyrised, is praised in one of the papers of
the Mirror as, rejecting the most flattering and
advantageous opportunities of Settlement in marriage,
that she might amuse her father?s loneliness
and nurse his old age.
He was the earliest patron of one of the best
scholars of his time, Professor John Hunter, who
was for many years his secretary, and wrote the
first and best volume of his lordship?s ? Treatise on
the Origin of Languages.? When Lord Monboddo
travelled to London he? always did so on hoeeback.
On his last journey thither he ?got no
farther than Dunbar. His nephew inquiring the
Teason of this, ?.?Oh, George,? said he, ? I find I
am noo aughty-four,? The manners of Lord Monboddo
were as?odd as his personal appearance.
He has been described as looking ?more like an
.old stuffed monkey dressed in judge?s robes than
anything else;? and so convinced is he said to
have been of his fantastic theory of human tails
that, when a child was born in his house he would
watch at the chamber door, in order to see it in its
first state, as he had an idea that midwives cut the
tails off!
He never recoveied the shock of his beautiful
in 1790. He kept her portrait covered with black
cloth; at this he would often look sadly, without
lifting it, and then turn to his volume of Herodotus.
He died in 1799.
The other eccentric we have referred to was
Henry Home, Lord Kames, who was equally distinguished
for his literary abilities, his metaphysical
subtlety, and wonderful powers of conversation j
yet he was strangely accustomed to apply towards
his intimates a coarse term which he invariably
used, and this peculiarity is well noted by Sir Walter
Scott in ?Redgauntlet.? He was raised to the
Bench in 1752, and afterwards lived in New Street,
in a house then ranking as one of the first in the
city, The catalogue of his printed works is a very
long one.
On retiring from the Bench he took a public
farewell of. his brother judges. After a solemn
and pathetic speech, and shaking hands all round,
as he was quitting the Court, he turned round,
and exclaimed, in his familiar manner, ?Fare ye
a? weel, ye auld -? here using his customary
expression. A day or two b.efore his death he
told Dr. Cullen that he earnestly wished to be
away,?as he was exceedingly curious to learn the
manners of another world ; adding, ? Doctor, as I
never could be idle in this world, I shall gladly
perform any task that may be imposed upon me
in the next? He died in December, 1782, in
his 87th year.
Sir David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes, the annalist
of Scotland, was raised to the Bench in 1766. He
had studied law at Utrecht, and was distinguished
for his strict integrity, unwearied diiigence, and dignity
of manner, but he was more conspicuous as
a scholar and author than as a senator. His researches
were chiefly directed t9 the history and
antiquities of his native country; and his literary
labours extended over a period of close on forty
years. .4t his death, in 1792, an able funeral
sermon was preached by the well-known b r .
Alexander Carlyle of Inveresk; and, as no will
could be found, the heir-male was about to take
possession of his estates, to the exclusion of his
daughter, but some months after, when she was
about to give up Ne% Hailes, and quit the house
in New Street, one was found behind a windowshutter,
in the latter place, and it secured her iu
the possession of all, till her own death, which
took place forty years after.
Francis Gardner, Lord Gardenstone, appointed
in 1764, was one of those ancient heroes of the
Bar, who, after a night of hard drinking, would,
without having been in bed, or studying a case,
