No More Learning

The character of the whimsical virtuoso,
Jonathan Oldbuck of Monkbarns, was partly founded on that of an old friend of Scott's
youth, George Constable, of Wallace Craigie, vear Dundee, while the scene in which
Edie Ochiltree interrupts the antiquary's ecstatic description of the Praetorium of
Agrippa by exclaiming, ' Praetorian here, Praetorian there, I mind the bigging o't,' is
an echo of an incident that actually happened to an antiquary of great           and
acuteness, Sir John Clerk, of Penicuik, one of the barons of the Scottish court of
exchequer, when he conducted the English antiquary, Roger Gale, to the Roman station
of Birrenswark, in Dumfriesshire.