Chambers gives an illustrative anecdote of our subjects' matrimonial practices in that of a soldier and a countryman seeking from Wilson a cast of his office: from the first Claudero took his shilling, but demanded from the last a fee of five, observing—
"I'll hae this sodger ance a week a' the times he's in Edinburgh, and you (the countryman) I winna see again."
The Scottish poetical antiquary is familiar with this eccentric character; but it may not be uninteresting to your general readers to add, that when public excitement in Edinburgh ran high against the Kirk, the lawyers, meal-mongers, or other rogues in grain, Claudero was the vehicle through which the democratic voice found vent in squibs and broadsides fired at the offending party or obnoxious measure from his lair in the Canongate.
In his Miscellanies, Edin. 1766, now before me, Claudero's cotemporary, Geordie Boick, in a poetical welcome to London, thus compliments Wilson, and bewails the condition of the modern Athens under its bereavement of the poet:
"The ballad-singers and the printers,
Must surely now have starving winters;
Their press they may break a' in splinters,
I'm told they swear,
Claudero's Muse, alas! we've tint her
For ever mair."