Scott says, in a note to the Ashiestiel fragment of Autobiography, that Mr.
George Constable, an old friend of his father's, "had many of those peculiarities of character which long afterwards I tried to develop in the character of Jonathan Oldbuck." Sir Walter, when a child, made Mr.
Constable's acquaintance at Prestonpans in 1777, where he explored the battle-field "under the learned guidance of Dalgetty." Mr.Constable first introduced him to Shakspeare's plays, and gave him his first German dictionary.

Other traits may have been suggested by John Clerk of Eldin, whose grandfather was the hero of the story "Praetorian here, Praetorian there, I made it wi' a flaughter spade." Lockhart is no doubt right in thinking that Oldbuck is partly a caricature of Oldbuck's creator,--Sir Walter indeed frankly accepted the kinship; and the book which he began on his own collection he proposed to style "Reliquim Trotcosienses; or, the Gabions of Jonathan Oldbuck." Another person who added a few points to Oldbuck was "Sandy Gordon," author of the "Itinerarium Septentrionale" (1726), the very folio which Monkbarns carried in the dilatory coach to Queensferry.

Gordon had been a student in the University of Aberdeen; he was an amateur in many arts, but antiquarianism was his favourite hobby.

He was an acquaintance of Sir John Clerk of Eldin, the hero of the Praetorium.

The words of Gordon in his "Itinerarium," where he describes the battle of the Grampians, have supplied, or suggested, the speech of Monkbarns at the Kaim of Kinprunes.