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Lord Monboddo and Some of His Contemporaries
Lord Monboddo and Some of His Contemporaries Author:William Angus Knight Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER THIRD. SOME NOTES ON MONBODDo'S FRIENDS, AND CORRESPONDENTS. James Harris of Salisbury (1709-80) was a learned man in various directions, especial... more »ly in that of the Greek and Roman classics, (Aristotle in particular). He wrote essays on Art, Music, Painting, Poetry, and on Happiness, which were published in 1744. In 1750 appeared his more famous work, Hermes: or, A Philosophical Inquiry concerning Universal Grammar. In the first chapter of his Origin and Progress of Language Monboddo refers to his " worthy and learned friend, Mr Harris;" and adds, in a footnote: " The author of Hermes, a work that will be read and admired so long as there is any taste for Philosophy and fine writing in Britain." In 1775 he gave to the world his Philosophical Arrangements (on the Categories or Predicaments); and in 1780 his Philological Inquiries. He entered Parliament in 1761, and was successively a Lord of the Admiralty and Lord of the Treasury. In 1774 he became Secretary and Comptroller to Queen Charlotte, which office he retained till his death in 1780. His son James (1746-1820) became the first Earl of Malmesbury, and published a complete edition of his father's works in 1801. He was a successful foreign diplomatist, was Secretary to the Embassy at Madrid, to i5 M Y Minister-plenipotentiary at Berlin, St Petersburg, and the Hague, was made Knight of the Bath in 1778, a baron in 1788, and Earl of Malmesbury in 1800. The elder Harris was a good Greek scholar; and his general learning enabled him to produce, in his Hermes, a pioneer work on the philosophy of grammar, although it has been superseded by subsequent research. Many foreign dialects—not to mention languages—were then quite unknown to English scholars, and from his ignorance of facts some of his deductio...« less