Instead of ordinary accommodations for writing, each of the persons present was equipped with a large sheet of drawing paper and a swan's quill. It was mournfully ridiculous enough. Skirving[200] made an admirable likeness of Walker, not a single scar or mark of the smallpox which seamed his countenance, but the too accurate brother of the brush had faithfully laid it down in longitude and latitude. Poor Walker destroyed it (being in crayons) rather than let the caricature of his ugliness appear at the sale of his effects. I did learn myself to take some vile views from Nature. When Will Clerk and I lived very much together, I used sometimes to make them under his instruction. He to whom, as to all his family, art is a familiar attribute, wondered at me as a Newfoundland dog would at a greyhound which showed fear of the water. Going down to Liddesdale once, I drew the castle of Hermitage in my fashion, and sketched it so accurately that with a few verbal instructions Clerk put it into regular form, Williams[201] (the Grecian) copied over Clerk's, and _his_ drawing was engraved as the frontispiece of the first volume of the Kelso edition, _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_.[202] Do you know why you have written all this down, Sir W.? Because it pleases me to record that this thrice-transmitted drawing, though taken originally from a sketch of mine, was extremely like Hermitage, which neither of my colleagues in the task had ever seen? No, that's not the reason. You want to put off writing _Woodstock_, just as easily done as these memoranda, but which it happens your duty and your prudence recommend, and therefore you are loath to begin. "Heigho, I can't say no; But this piece of task-work off I can stave, O, For Malachi's posting into an octavo; To correct the proof-sheets only this night I have, O, So, Madame Conscience, you've gotten as good as you gave, O But to-morrow's a new day and we'll better behave, O, So I lay down the pen, and your pardon I crave, O." In the evening Mr. Gibson called and transacted business.