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Rh Lord Monboddo." The two men had not much in common except their love of learning, and their precision of speech. Monboddo, according to Foote, was an Elzevir edition of Johnson. In a letter to Mrs. Thrale Johnson thus describes him:

Johnson a few years earlier had contrasted Monboddo with Rousseau, "who talked nonsense so well that he must know he was talking nonsense;" whereas, he added, "chuckling and laughing, 'I am afraid Monboddo does not know that he is talking nonsense.'" He was undoubtedly a man of great learning, but he was almost destitute of the critical faculty. In the six volumes of his Ancient Metaphysics we come across such strange passages as the following:

After stating his readiness to believe that "a tame and gentle animal" once existed, "having the head of a man and the body of a lion," he continues:

The orang-outang he describes as being "of a character mild and gentle, affectionate, too, and capable of friendship, with the sense also of what is decent and becoming." The ancients, he stoutly maintained, were in every respect better and stronger than their descendants. He shocked Hannah More by telling her that "he loved slavery upon principle." When she asked him "how he could vindicate such an enormity, he owned it was because Plutarch justified it." In one respect he was wise in following