r
grippie, he'll gar the blue blood spin frae your nails--his
hand's like a smith's vice."--_Black Dwarf_, chap. xvii.]

One morning Scott called on Clerk, and, exhibiting his stick all cut
and marked, told him he had been attacked in the streets the night
before by three fellows, against whom he had defended himself for an
hour. "By Shrewsbury clock?" said his friend. "No," said Scott,
smiling, "by the Tron." But thenceforth, adds Mr. Clerk, and for
twenty years after, he called his walking stick by the name of
"Shrewsbury."

With these comrades Scott now resumed, and pushed to a much greater
extent, his early habits of wandering over the country in quest of
castles and other remains of antiquity, his passion for which derived
a new impulse from the conversation of the celebrated John Clerk of
Eldin,[68] the father of his friend. William Clerk well remembers his
father telling a story which was introduced in due time in The
Antiquary. While he was visiting his grandfather, Sir John Clerk, at
Dumcrieff, in Dumfriesshire, many years before this time, the old
Baronet carried some English virtuosos to see a supposed Roman camp;
and on his exclaiming at a particular spot, "This I take to have been
the Praetorium," a herdsman who stood by answered, "Praetorium here
Praetorium there, I made it wi' a slaughter spade."[69] Many traits of
the elder Clerk were, his son has no doubt, embroidered on the
character of George Constable in the composition of Jonathan Oldbuck.
The old gentleman's enthusiasm, for antiquities was often played on by
these young friends, but more effectually by his eldest son, John
Clerk (Lord Eldin), who, having a great genius for art, used to amuse
himself with manufacturing mutilated heads, which, after being buried
for a convenient time in the {p.133} ground, were accidentally
discovered in some fortunate hour, and received by the laird with
great honor as valuable accessions to his museum.[70]

[Footnote 68: Author of the famous Essay on dividing the Line
in Sea-fights.]

[Footnote 69: Compare _The Antiquary_, chap. iv.]

[Footnote 70: The most remarkable of these _antique heads_
was so highly appreciated by another distinguished
connoisseur, the late Earl of Buchan, that he carried it off
from Mr. Clerk's museum, and presented it to the Scottish
Society of Antiquaries--in whose collection, no doubt, it may