the
original spelling. BOSWELL.

[811] See _ante,_ i., 127.

[812] Muir-fowl is grouse. _Ante_ p. 44.

[813] See ante, p. 162, note 1.

[814] 'In Col only two houses pay the window tax; for only two have six
windows, which, I suppose, are the laird's and Mr. Macsweyn's.'
Johnson's _Works_, ix. 125. 'The window tax, as it stands at present
(January 1775)...lays a duty upon every window, which in England
augments gradually from twopence, the lowest rate upon houses with not
more than seven windows, to two shillings, the highest rate upon houses
with twenty-five windows and upwards.' _Wealth of Nations,_ v. 2. 2 .1.
The tax was first imposed in 1695, as a substitute for hearth money.
Macaulay's _England,_ ed. 1874, vii. 271. It was abolished in 1851.

[815] Thomas Carlyle was not fourteen when, one 'dark frosty November
morning,' he set off on foot for the University at Edinburgh--a distance
of nearly one hundred miles. Froude's _Carlyle_, i. 22.

[816] _Ante_, p. 290.

[817] _Of the Nature and Use of Lots: a Treatise historicall and
theologicall._ By Thomas Gataker. London, 1619. _The Spirituall Watch,
or Christ's Generall Watch-word._ By Thomas Gataker. London, 1619.

[818] See _ante_, p. 264.

[819] He visited it with the Thrales on Sept. 22, 1774, when returning
from his tour to Wales, and with Boswell in 1776 (_ante_, ii. 451).

[820] Mr. Croker says that 'this, no doubt, alludes to Jacob Bryant, the
secretary or librarian at Blenheim, with whom Johnson had had perhaps
some coolness now forgotten.' The supposition of the coolness seems
needless. With so little to go upon, guessing is very hazardous.

[821] Topham Beauclerk, who had married the Duke's sister, after she had
been divorced for adultery with him from her first husband Viscount
Bolingbroke. _Ante_, ii. 246, note 1.

[822] See _post_, Dempster's Letter of Feb. 16, 1775.

[823] See _ante_, ii. 340, where Johnson said that 'if he were a
gentleman of landed property, he would turn out all his tenants who did
not vote for the candidate whom he supported.'

[824] See _ante_, iii. 378.

[825] 'They have opinions which cannot be ranked with superstition,
because they regard only natural effects. They expect better crops of
grain by sowing their seed in the moon's increase. The moon has great
influence in vulgar philosophy. In my memory it was a precept annually
given in one of the English almanacks, "to kill hogs when the moon was
increasing, and