A like ordeal took place with respect to Macpherson’s Ossian from a similar reason, the mention of the sun’s reflection setting on a glass window: now the existence of Ossian being contemporary with that of Julius Cæsar, it was contended that at that period it was not customary to glaze windows. The Johnsonian faction set about that business in a very unsystematic manner: they should have procured some well qualified Erse scholar to have gone into those wilds where Macpherson declared he collected his materials from oral traditionary recitals, and have heard the poems themselves from the mouths of the aged inhabitants. If the traces of them could not have been found, they might then have ascribed the superior honour to Macpherson of writing a work that Greece, or Rome, in the splendour of literary glory, never surpassed, for many poetical beauties. The people of Scotland, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, had, in the proper sense of the word, breeches; and wore a kind of stockings, their hose coming only to the knees; their stockings were made of linen or woollen, and breeches of hemp. It is supposed that these particular articles of dress were also common in England, at and after that time, for in the year 1510, Henry VIII. appeared upon a public occasion, with his attendants, in dresses of the following description:--“The king and some of the gentlemen had the upper parts of their hosen, which was of blue and crimson, powdered with castels and sheafes of arrows of fine ducket gold, and the nether parts of scarlet, powdered with timbrels,” &c. There may be occasion to suppose the upper parts of the hose were in separate pieces, as they were of different colours. Hollinshed, also speaking of another festival says, “The garments of six of them were of strange cuts, every cut _knit_ with points of gold, and tassels of the same, their hosen cut in and tied likewise.” In A. D. 1530, the word _knit_ appears to have been quite common in England, for John Palsgrave, a French master to the Princess Mary, daughter of Henry VIII., published a grammar, in which he stated, that this word in French was applied to the making of nets as well as of caps and of stockings. In the household book of a noble family in the reign of Henry VIII., kept during the life of Sir Thomas L’Estrange, Knight of Hunstanton, Norfolk, by his Lady, Ann, daughter of Lord Vaux, there are the following entries, whence the price of those articles at that period are ascertained:-- 1533. 25 H. 8. 7 Sept. Peyd for 4 peyr of knytt hose--viii _s._ 1538. 30 H. 8. 3 Oct. ---- 2 peyr of knytt hose--i _s._ It is observed that the first four pairs were for Sir Thomas, and the latter for his children.