Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
S.A. Bent, comp. Familiar Short Sayings of Great Men. 1887.
Lord Kames
[Henry Home, a Scotch judge; born at Kames, 1696; appointed judge of the court of sessions, 1752; a lord of justiciary, 1763; died 1782.]
Tickle him yourself, Harry: you are as able to do it as I am.
Interrupting, amid general laughter, the beginning of Erskine’s speech for one Tickle: “Tickle, my client, the defendant, my lord.”When Gilbert Eliot expressed sorrow at his ignorance of a particular branch of political economy, and asked Lord Kames how he might overcome it, the latter replied, “Shall I tell you, my friend, how you will come to understand it? Go and write a book upon it.” The remark has been attributed to Pothier, the French jurist. It may have been Lord Kames’s method with his most important work, “The Elements of Criticism,” of which Goldsmith said, “It is easier to write that book than to read it.”—BOSWELL: Johnson, 1769.
