Known for his eccentric yet kindly nature, Lord Monboddo remained generous and loyal even to critics, and was famed for his hospitable but unpretentious household in St John Street. His domestic life was marked by early personal losses, but brightened by his youngest daughter, Miss Burnett, whose beauty, intellect, and devoted affection made her both his chief comfort and an ornament of Edinburgh society. Celebrated by Robert Burns and admired for her warmth and modest grace, she devoted herself to her father rather than marriage, and her early death in 1790 deeply affected Lord Monboddo, from which he never fully recovered.
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