CHAP. I.] CLERKS OP PENICUIK. 21 



gained over the French by Lord Rodney's fleet off Dominique in 

 1782. It is fair to add that Sir C. Douglas claimed to have in- 

 dependently hit on the new method of " breaking the enemy's 

 line." But John Clerk never relinquished his pretensions to the 

 merit of the discovery, and his book on Naval Tactics in the 

 edition of 1804 l is a thick octavo volume, with many woodcut 

 illustrations and diagrams. He used to sail his mimic navies, 

 trying various combinations with them, on the fish-ponds at 

 Penicuik. 2 His eldest son, John Clerk, afterwards Lord Eldin 

 of the Court of Session, made a vivid and lasting impression on 

 his contemporaries, and many anecdotes of legal shrewdness and 

 caustic wit still live about his name. 3 A graphic description 

 of him as the Coryphseus of the Scottish Bar occurs in Peter's 

 Letters to his Kinsfolk, Letter xxxii. 4 Quite recently he has 

 appeared again in Carlyle's Reminiscences, 5 as the one figure in the 

 Edinburgh law-courts, which remained clearly imprinted on the 

 historian's imagination. 



Lord Eldin's younger brother, William Clerk, was the trusted 



1 There were in all five issues, viz., in 1781, 1790, 1797, 1804, 

 and (with notes by Lord Rodney) in 1827. 



2 Miss Isabella Clerk is my authority for this. 



3 It has been often told how John Clerk, in an appeal before the 

 House of Lords, when twitted for his pronunciation by Lord Mans- 

 field, "Mr. Clerk, do you spell water with a doubled?" replied, 

 " Na, my laird, we spell water wi' yae t, and we spell manners wi' twa 

 ?i's." The following is less known : A young advocate in the Court 

 of Session had ventured, in the vehemence of pleading, to exclaim 

 against some deliverance of the Court, " My lords, I am astonished," 

 whereupon my lords contracted their judicial brows. But Clerk, who 

 by this time was one of them, is reported to have said, " Dinna be ill 

 at the laddie ! it's just his inexperience. Gin he had kenned ye, my 

 lairds, as lang as I hae, he wad no been astonished at onything ye 

 might dae." It was his father who, on the occasion of Johnson's visit 

 to the Parliament House, clapped a shilling in Boswell's hand with 

 " Here's till ye for the sight o' your Bear ! " 



4 " The very essence of his character is scorn of ornament." 



5 Vol. ii. p. 7. " The only figure I distinctly recollect and got 

 printed on my brain that night was John Clerk, there veritably hitch- 

 ing about, whose grim, strong countenance, with its black, far-projecting 

 brows and look of great sagacity, fixed him in my memory. ... Ex- 

 cept Clerk, I carried no figure away with me." 



