overed at low water of
neaps, appeared a fascinating enterprise. It was something yet
unattempted, unessayed; and even now, after it has been lighted for more
than eighty years, it is still an exploit that has never been
repeated.[12] My grandfather was, besides, but a young man, of an
experience comparatively restricted, and a reputation confined to
Scotland; and when he prepared his first models, and exhibited them in
Merchants' Hall, he can hardly be acquitted of audacity. John Clerk of
Eldin stood his friend from the beginning, kept the key of the model
room, to which he carried "eminent strangers," and found words of
counsel and encouragement beyond price. "Mr. Clerk had been personally
known to Smeaton, and used occasionally to speak of him to me," says my
grandfather; and again: "I felt regret that I had not the opportunity of
a greater range of practice to fit me for such an undertaking; but I was
fortified by an expression of my friend Mr. Clerk in one of our
conversations. 'This work,' said he, 'is unique, and can be little
forwarded by experience of ordinary masonic operations. In this case
Smeaton's "Narrative" must be the text-book, and energy and perseverance
the pratique.'"

A Bill for the work was introduced into Parliament and lost in the Lords
in 1802-3. John Rennie was afterwards, at my grandfather's suggestion,
called in council, with the style of chief engineer. The precise meaning
attached to these words by any of the parties appears irrecoverable.
Chief engineer should have full authority, full responsibility, and a
proper share of the emoluments; and there were none of these for Rennie.
I find in an appendix a paper which resumes the controversy on this
subject; and it will be enough to say here that Rennie did not design
the Bell Rock, that he did not execute it, and that he was not paid for
it.[13] From so much of the correspondence as has come down to me, the
acquaintance of this man, eleven years his senior, and already famous,
appears to have been both useful and agreeable to Robert Stevenson. It
is amusing to find my grandfather seeking high and low for a brace of
pistols which his colleague had lost by the way between Aberdeen and
Edinburgh; and writing to Messrs. Dollond, "I have not thought it
necessary to trouble Mr. Rennie with this order, but _I beg you will see
to get two minutes of him as he passes your door_"--a proposal
calculated rather from the latitude of Edinburgh than from Lo