listen and observe rather than acting on preconceived theories. Then, as A. N. Wilson says, “Oldbuck’s stature as a man is measured by the depth of his sympathies, by his Christian charity”. Though Oldbuck is in politics a Whig and a supporter of the French Revolution, yet at the novel's end when the Revolution seems to be coming too close to home he finds himself to be a patriot ready to fight for his country. The origins of Oldbuck The writer W. S. Crockett considered Jonathan Oldbuck to be more firmly based on real-life models than any other of Scott's characters, Edie Ochiltree alone excepted. Scott himself tells us that the character was loosely based on a friend of his father’s, one George Constable, a retired lawyer who lived at a country house called Wallace-Craigie, near Dundee. Scott first got to know him when only six years old, and for the first time learned from Constable about Falstaff, Hotspur and other characters from Shakespeare. Scott’s biographer Hesketh Pearson attributes to this the fact that The Antiquary contains more quotations from and allusions to Shakespeare than any other of his novels. The resemblance between the real and fictional characters was detected by a friend of Constable and of Scott’s father, George Chalmers, much to Scott's astonishment, since he believed he had erased all such similarities as might be recognized. He claimed that there is not a single incident in the novel which is borrowed from his real circumstances except the fact that he resided in an old house near a flourishing seaport, and that the Author chanced to witness a scene betwixt him and the female proprietor of a stage coach, very similar to that which commences the history of The Antiquary. An excellent temper, with a slight degree of subacid humour; learning, wit, and drollery, the more piquant that they were a little marked by the peculiarities of an old bachelor; a soundness of thought rendered more forcible by an occasional quaintness of expression, were, the Author avers, the only qualities in which the creature of his imagination resembled his benevolent and excellent old friend. George Gleig, one of Scott's early biographers, was certain that another model for Oldbuck was a Highlander called John Ramsay of Ochtertyre, whom Scott knew for many years. Ramsay was a keen collector of Roman and prehistoric antiquities, and was an authority on Scottish traditions