LORD KAMES.
This able judge and philosopher in advance of his time—for such he was—is described by his biographer, Lord Woodhouselee, as indulging in a certain humorous playfulness, which, to those who knew him intimately, detracted nothing from the feeling of respect due to his eminent talents and virtues. To strangers, his lordship admits, it might convey ‘the idea of lightness.’ The simple fact here shadowed forth is that Lord Kames had a roughly playful manner, and used phrases of an ultra-eccentric character. Among these was a word only legitimately applicable to the female of the canine species. The writer of the Garland introduces this characteristic phrase. When his lordship found his end approaching very near, he took a public farewell of his brethren. I was informed by an ear-and-eye witness, who is certain that he could not be mistaken, that, after addressing them in a solemn speech and shaking their hands all round, in going out at the door of the court-room he turned about, and casting them a last look, cried in his usual familiar tone: ‘Fare ye a’ weel, ye bitches!’ He died eight days after.
It was remarked that a person called Sinkum the Cawdy, who had a short and a long leg and was excessively addicted to swearing, used to lie in wait for Lord Kames almost every morning, and walk alongside of him up the street to the Parliament House. The mystery of Sterne’s little, flattering Frenchman, who begged so successfully from the ladies, was scarcely more wonderful than this intimacy, which arose entirely from Lord Kames’s love of the gossip which Sinkum made it his business to cater for him.
These are not follies of the wise. They are only the tribute which great genius pays to simple nature. The serenity which marked the close of the existence of Kames was most creditable to him, though it appeared, perhaps, in somewhat whimsical forms to his immediate friends. For three or four days before his death, he was in a state of great debility. Some one coming in, and finding him, notwithstanding his weakness, engaged in dictating to an amanuensis, expressed surprise. ‘How, man,’ said the declining philosopher, ‘would you ha’e me stay wi’ my tongue in my cheek till death comes to fetch me?’