Blacklock was a Scottish poet and scholar. His father was a bricklayer, and his mother was the daughter of Mr Richard Rae, a cattle dealer. 

He lost his sight as a result of smallpox when he was just six months old. At the age of 12, he began writing poetry, and due to the influence of some of his friends, he soon gained some reputation in Scotland and abroad as a blind poet with some promise.

By 1759 he had completed his theological studies, and he was licensed as a preacher in Dumfries, where he acquired a considerable reputation as a pulpit orator. He was appointed minister of Kirkcudbright, but was objected to by the parishioners on account of his blindness, and gave up the presentation on receiving an annuity. He later removed to Edinburgh, where he became a tutor, and in 1767 he was made a D.D. (Doctor of Divinity) from Marischal College in Aberdeen.

Blacklock's poems are mostly forgotten today, and his primary claim to fame is saving the life of poet Robert Burns by persuading him not to go to the West Indies, but to stay and publish his poems instead. The ship that Burns was supposed to travel with sank on its subsequent voyage with all lives lost. According to Corey Andrews in The Genius of Scotland: The Cultural Production of Robert Burns, 1785-1834, "[Burns wrote, in an autobiographical letter to John Moore,] that 'a letter from Dr. Blacklock overthrew all my schemes by rousing by poetic ambition.' He confesses that 'the Doctor belonged to a set a Critics for whose applause I had not even dared to hope'."

According to Chambers' Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen (1872), "[i]t has been said of Dr Blacklock that 'he never lost a friend, nor made a foe;' and perhaps no literary man ever passed through life so perfectly free from envious feeling, and so entirely respected and beloved. His conversation was lively and entertaining; his wit was acknowledged, but it had no tinge of malice; his temper was gentle, his feelings warm—intense; his whole character was one to which may be applied the epithet amiable, without any qualification."

Scottish judge, philosopher and noted eccentric. Burnett was the son of James Burnett of Monboddo and Elizabeth Forbes. He married Elizabeth Farquharson, with whom he had two daughters and a son.

Burnett was educated at Marischal College in Aberdeen, and at Edinburgh University before going to Groningen (in present-day Netherlands) to study for three years. After his return to Scotland, he passed his civil law examination in February 1737 and shortly after was admitted a member of the Faculty of Advocates.

In 1767 he succeeded Andrew Fletcher, Lord Milton, as a Lord of Session (judge), assuming the title Lord Monboddo. 

Burnett was also a distinguished linguist, and his six-volume The Origin and Progress of Language (1773-1792) is considered the first major work in modern, comparative historical linguistics. He is even considered an early evolutionary theorist, although his theories about ouran-outangs (then used to refer to any kind of monkey) being a pre-cursor for man was widely and famously ridiculed.

Lord Monboddo is used as a character in Lillian de la Torre's The Monboddo Ape Boy, published in Dr. Sam: Johnson, Detector, a collection of nine fictional short stories featuring Dr Johnson and James Boswell in a Holmes/Watson-like partnership.

Robert Cullen was the son of the noted Edinburgh physician, chemist and professor, William Cullen. He married Mary Russell (d.1818) but had no children.1

Cullen was educated at Edinburgh University and admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1764. He later became a judge, serving as one of the senators of the College of Justice (1796-9) and as a Lord of Justiciary (1799-1810).

In 1783, he co-founded, with his father and other prominent Edinburgh citizens, the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

• 1In 1813, Cullen's widow, Mary, married J. J. Alexander, Esq. of St. Lucia, and died on that island in 1818.

Robertson studied in Aberdeen and at Leyden University, from which he graduated in 1749. He continued on to Oxford University, where he studied Hebrew under Thomas Hunt (1696-1774), the Laudian Professor of Arabic. 

In 1751, he became Professor of Hebrew at Edinburgh University, supported by a written testimonial from his old Professor at Leyden, the philologist Albert Schultens, who had died the year before. He stayed on as Professor until 1792, a few years before his death. From 1763 until 1785 he was even the University Librarian.

He was a much-respected scholar in his own time, and he wrote such works as Grammatica linguae Hebraeae (1758), The resemblance of Jesus to Moses considered (1765), and Clavis Pentateuchi (1770)

Ferguson was the son of Rev. Adam Ferguson and his wife Mary Gordon. In 1767 Ferguson married Katharine Burnett (d. 1795) but had no children.

He received his education at Perth Grammar School, before going on to the universities of Edinburgh and St. Andrews, from which he took his M.A. in 1742. In 1745 he became regimental chaplain to the 43rd Highland Regiment of Foot1, and he continued to be attached to the regiment until 1754 when he decided to leave the clergy to pursue more literary interests.

In 1757 he briefly succeeded David Hume as Keeper of the Advocates' Library, but soon after relinquished his office, when he became a tutor in the family of the Earl of Bute. In 1759 Ferguson was appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh before, in 1764, becoming Professor of Pneumatics and Moral Philosophy instead.

Ferguson's main claim to fame is arguably his Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), which received critical acclaim and which was widely read even three decades after its initial publication. 

He resigned his position as Professor of Moral Philosophy in 1785, but he continued with his literary endeavours, and in 1792 appeared, in two volumes, his Principles of Moral and Political Science.

In 1793, at the respectable old age of 70, Ferguson visited Germany and Italy, residing for a short time at Rome, and was elected an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin.

• 1The 43rd Regiment was renumbered in 1751, becoming the 42nd Highland Regiment of Foot. It is also known as The Black Watch.

Brown was the longtime Keeper of the Advocates Library in Edinburgh (1766-1794), which, in the 18th century, was the de facto national library of Scotland.

Brown was also an able archer, who, on May 26, 1781, during a practice session  "won eight successive ends, and nine successive shots in these eight ends, against the whole other of these shooters—an instance similar not known or remembered by any archer present to have happened before. This, it may be explained, occurred while shooting at rovers, and not in the butts, which, of course, makes the fact all the more wonderful. The gentleman who performed it was the Librarian to the Faculty of Advocates, and was at one time employed in collecting materials for a History of Archery and the Royal Company, but did not proceed very far with it"  1

• 1 Paul, James Balfour. (1875) The History of the Royal Company of Arches. pp. 97-98

British soldier. Oughton was the illegitimate son of Colonel Augustus Oughton (d. 1736) and Frances Dickenson. He married the widow Mary Dalrymple.

Oughton was educated at Coventry, Charterhouse School and Trinity College, Dublin, before entering the army in 1741. At the Battle of Culloden in 1746, he commanded a company of the 37th Foot Regiment. Some years later, at the famous Battle of Minden (1759), he commanded the entire regiment.

Around 1768, he was appointed Deputy Commander-in-Chief of North Britain (Scotland), and in 1778 he was elevated to the senior position as Commander-in-Chief of North Britain, succeeding John Campbell, the Marquess of Lorne. Oughton was for many years Secretary of the Cumberland Society, which was founded to commemorate the victory over Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1746, and we was 

Daughter of James Douglas of Mains, Dunbartonshire, and Isabel Corbet. In 1758 she married her distant kinsman, Archibald Douglas (1694-1791), the 1st Duke of Douglas, who also bore the titles of Earl of Angus and 3rd Marquess of Douglas. Their marriage was childless, but the Duchess moved to ensure, that her husband's estate would not go to the young Duke of Hamilton, who inherited all of the Duke's subsidiary titles, but rather to Archibald James Edward Stuart, the supposed child of the Duke of Douglas' sister, Jane. This resulted in a lengthy legal struggle known as the Douglas cause in which Boswell took great interest, siding with Archibald Stuart and the Duchess of Douglas. The House of Lords eventually, in 1769, decided in Stuart's favour.

The Duchess was apparently known for her lack of sophistication, but she was shrewd and with outspoken wit, which gained her some reputation. She was remembered as "the last of the nobility to be attended by halberdiers when going about the country[, and w]hen she visited she left her dress behind her as a present."1

• 1Cf. The Douglas Archives: Margaret Douglas

Longtime Keeper of Records at the Parliament House in Edinburgh. He was appointed on October 20, 1746, and continued to hold the office until February 1777, when he resigned on account of his age and infirmities.