486375 Contemplation - Lord Monboddo in his Study, 1784 (etching) by Kay, John (1742-1826); Private Collection; (add.info.: James Burnett, Lord Monboddo (1714-99) was a Scottish judge, scholar of linguistic evolution, philosopher and deist. He is most famous today as a founder of modern comparative historical linguistics. this is a satire on Monboddo\'s major study, \'Of the Origin and Progress of Language\' (1773-92), on which he is shown working. In the first of the six volumes, he controversially studied man as an animal, humanised by civil society and the arts, and maintained that the ape was a class of the human species. The picture hanging behind him of eight naked children with tails refers to his much ridiculed assertion that humans originally had them.); Scottish, out of copyright.