Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 7, 2025
Sir Adolphus Oughton, then our Deputy Commander in Chief, who was not only an excellent officer, but one of the most universal scholars I ever knew, had learned the Erse language, and expressed his belief in the authenticity of Ossian's Poetry . Dr. Johnson took the opposite side of that perplexed question; and I was afraid the dispute would have run high between them. But Sir Adolphus, who had a very sweet temper, changed the discourse, grew playful, laughed at Lord Monboddo's notion of men having tails, and called him a Judge,
Lord Monboddo received us at his gate most courteously; pointed to the Douglas arms upon his house, and told us that his great-grandmother was of that family. We are as strong as they, and a great deal wiser . This was an assault upon one of Lord Monboddo's capital dogmas, and I was afraid there would have been a violent altercation in the very close, before we got into the house.
Late in life he has 'done a little at Greek; Lord Monboddo's Ancient Metaphysics which I am reading carefully helps me to recover the language. He has his little scraps of irritating Latinity which he loves to parade, and when he dined at Eton, at the fellows' table, he 'made a considerable figure, having certainly the art of making the most of what I know.
'We are as strong as they, and a great deal wiser. This was an assault upon one of Lord Monboddo's capital dogmas, and I was afraid there would have been a violent altercation in the very close, before we got into the house. But his lordship is distinguished not only for 'ancient metaphysicks', but for ancient politesse, la vieille cour, and he made no reply.
A friend had read Lord Monboddo's view that men had sprung from apes, and suggested that the inhabitants of Gom Broon had tails, so that the brother told him that his subjects had not emerged from apedom and he must invent arts to eliminate the tails. They must be made to sit down for six hours a day as a beginning. Abdicate he would not, though all his subjects had three tails apiece.
I mentioned Lord Monboddo's opinion, that if a man could get a work by heart, he might print it, as by such an act the mind is exercised. JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; a man's repeating it no more makes it his property, than a man may sell a cow which he drives home. I said, printing an abridgement of a work was allowed, which was only cutting the horns and tail off the cow.
Robertson, who has the charge of Lord Findlater's affairs, and was formerly Lord Monboddo's clerk, was three times in France with him, and translated Condamine's Account of the Savage Girl, to which his lordship wrote a preface, containing several remarks of his own.
We talked of the Ouran-Outang, and of Lord Monboddo's thinking that he might be taught to speak. Dr Johnson treated this with ridicule. Mr Crosbie said, that Lord Monboddo believed the existence of every thing possible; in short, that all which is in posse might be found in esse. JOHNSON. 'But, sir, it is as possible that the Ouran-Outang does not speak, as that he speaks.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking