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At Lord Monboddo's, after the conversation upon the decrease of learning in England, his Lordship mentioned Hermes by Mr Harris of Salisbury, as the work of a living authour, for whom he had a great respect.
JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, I reconcile my principles very well, because mankind are happier in a state of inequality and subordination. Were they to be in this pretty state of equality, they would soon degenerate into brutes; they would become Monboddo's nation; their tails would grow. Sir, all would be losers were all to work for all they would have no intellectual improvement.
The decrease of learning in England, which Johnson lamented, was met by Monboddo's belief in its extinction in Scotland, but Bozzy, as the old High School of Edinburgh boy, put in a word for that place of education and brought him to confess that it did well. The New Inn at Aberdeen was full.
I mentioned Lord Monboddo's notion that the ancient Egyptians, with all their learning, and all their arts, were not only black, but woolly-haired. Mr. Palmer asked how did it appear upon examining the mummies? Dr. Johnson approved of this test . Although upon most occasions I never heard a more strenuous advocate for the advantages of wealth, than Dr.
We may go even further than this, and, as remarked in a former chapter, believe that musical sounds afforded one of the bases for the development of language. I find in Lord Monboddo's 'Origin of Language, vol. i. 1774, p. 469, that Dr.
I called on Mr 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.
Johnson did not love each other; yet I was unwilling not to visit his lordship, and was also curious to see them together. Accordingly, he brought about a meeting. Dr. Seattle wrote on Feb. 28, 1785:-'Lord Monboddo's hatred of Johnson was singular; he would not allow him to know anything but Latin grammar, "and that," says he, "I know as well as he does."
So natural a craze, therefore, however baseless, would never have carried Lord Monboddo's name into that meteoric notoriety and atmosphere of astonishment which soon invested it in England. How much it would have astonished Lord Monboddo to find himself made answerable, virtually made answerable, by the evidence of secret tears, for the misery of an unknown child in Lancashire.
The Doctor has been talking there for a hundred years, and there will he talk for many a hundred more. And we of another generation, and with other things to think about, can enter any night we please, and hear what is going on. Then we have the swarthy ploughman from Ayrshire sitting at Lord Monboddo's with Dr. Blair, Dugald Stewart, Henry Mackenzie, and the rest.
This is not spoken of hare-coursing, where the game is taken or lost before the dog gets out of wind; but in chasing deer with the great Highland greyhound, Col's exploit is feasible enough. See ante, pp. 45, III, for Monboddo's notion.
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