Monboddo

Monboddo, JAMES BURNETT, LORD, Scottish lawyer and author, was born at Monboddo House, in Fording parish, Kinardineshire, in 1714, and was educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh University, afterwards studying law for three years at Gröningen, in Holland. In 1737 he was called to 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 he acted as counsel for Mr Douglas. In 1764 he became sheriff of Kinardineshire, and in 1767 was raised to the bench by the title of Lord Monboddo. He died in Edinburgh, 26th May 1799. Monboddo's Origin and Progress of Language (6 vols. 1773-92) is a very learned, heretical, and eccentric production; yet in the midst of its grotesque crotchets there occasionally flashes out a wonderfully acute observation, that makes one regret the distorted and misapplied talent of the author. Its evolution theory and its assertion of a close relation between man and the orang-outang seems less laughable now; and in his study of man as one of the animals, and of civilisation by the light of savagery, he certainly anticipated the modern science of anthropology. Monboddo published, also anonymously, another work, Ancient Metaphysics (6 vols. 1779-99). See Life by Professor Knight (1900).