Note 238 — SATURDAY, AUGUST 31.

Hannah More (Memoirs, i. 252) wrote of Monboddo in 1782:—'He is such an extravagant adorer of the ancients, that he scarcely allows the English language to be capable of any excellence, still less the French. He said we moderns are entirely degenerated. I asked in what? "In everything," was his answer. He loves slavery upon principle. I asked him how he could vindicate such an enormity. He owned it was because Plutarch justified it. He is so wedded to system that, as Lord Barrington said to me the other day, rather than sacrifice his favourite opinion that men were born with tails, he would be contented to wear one himself.'