Lord Monboddo’s motion for the enforcement of the bill, on account of
its representing the value of a horse, is partly an allusion to his
Gulliverlike admiration of that animal, but more particularly to his
having once embroiled himself in an action respecting a horse which
belonged to himself. His lordship had committed the animal, when sick,
to the charge of a farrier, with directions for the administration of
a certain medicine. The farrier gave the medicine, but went beyond
his commission, in as far as he mixed it in a liberal _menstruum_ of
treacle in order to make it palatable. The horse dying next morning,
Lord Monboddo raised a prosecution for its value, and actually pleaded
his own cause at the bar. He lost the case, however; and is said to
have been so enraged in consequence at his brethren that he never
afterwards sat with them upon the bench, but underneath amongst the
clerks. The report of this action is exceedingly amusing, on account of
the great quantity of Roman law quoted by the judges, and the strange
circumstances under which the case appeared before them.
Lord Monboddo, with all his oddities, and though generally hated or
despised by his brethren, was by far the most learned and not the
least upright judge of his time. His attainments in classical learning
and in the study of the ancient philosophers were singular in his
time in Scotland, and might have qualified him to shine anywhere. He
was the earliest patron of one of the best scholars of his age, the
late Professor John Hunter of St Andrews, who was for many years his
secretary, and who chiefly wrote the first and best volume of his
lordship’s _Treatise on the Origin of Languages_.
The manners of Lord Monboddo were not more odd than his personal
appearance. He looked rather like an old stuffed monkey dressed in a
judge’s robes than anything else. His face, however, ‘sicklied o’er’
with the pale cast of thought, bore traces of high intellect. So
convinced is he said to have been of the truth of his fantastic theory
of human tails, that whenever a child happened to be born in his house,
he would watch at the chamber-door in order to see it in its first
state, having a notion that the midwives pinched off the infant tails.
There is a tradition that Lord Monboddo attended and witnessed the
catastrophe of Captain Porteous in 1736. He had just that day returned
from completing his law education at Leyden, and taken lodgings near
the foot of the West Bow, where at that time many of the greatest
lawyers resided. When the rioters came down the Bow with their hapless
victim, Mr Burnet was roused from bed by the noise, came down in his
night-gown with a candle in his hand, and stood in a sort of stupor,
looking on, till the tragedy was concluded.