N° XXXV.

EDWARD GIBBON, Esq. to J. HOLROYD, Esq.

room

DEAR HOLROYD,

January 12, 1773. LENBOROUGH is no more! Lord **** acted like a Jew, and I dare say now repents it. In his ** found me a better man, a rich, brutish, honest horse-dealer, who has got a great fortune by serving the cavalry. On Thursday he saw Lenborough, on Friday came to town with ** *, and this morning at nine o'clock we struck at 20,000l. after a very hard battle. As times go, I am not dissatisfied. * * * * and the new Lord of Lenborough (by name Lovegrove) dined with me; and though we did not speak the same language, yet by the help of signs, such as that of putting about the bottle, the natives seemed well satisfied.

The whole world is going down to Portsmouth, where they will enjoy the pleasures of smoke, noise, heat, bad lodgings, and expensive reckonings. For my own part, I have firmly resisted importunity, declined parties, and mean to pass the busy week in the soft retirement of my bocage de Bentinck-street. Yesterday the East India Company positively refused the loan: a noble resolution, could they get money any where else. They are violent; and it was moved, and the motion heard with some degree of approbation, that they should instantly abandon India to Lord North, Sujah Dowlah, or the Devil, if he chose to take it. Adieu.

N° XXXVI.

EDWARD GIBBON, Esq. to J. HOLROYD, Esq. Boodle's, May 11, 1773.

DEAR HOLROYD,

I AM full of worldly cares, anxious about the great twenty-fourth, plagued with the Public Advertiser, distressed by the most dismal dispatches from Hugonin. Mrs. Lee claims a million of repairs, which will cost a million of money.

The House of Commons sat late last night. Burgoyne made some spirited motions-"That the territorial acquisitions in India belonged to the state (that was the word); that grants to the servants of the company (such as jaghires) were illegal; and that there would be no true repentance without restitution." Wedderburne defended the nabobs with great eloquence, but little argument. The motions were carried without a division; and the hounds go out again next Friday. They are in high spirits; but the more sagacious ones have no idea they shall kill. Lord North spoke for the inquiry, but faintly and reluctantly. Lady *** is said to be in town at her mother's, and a separation is unavoidable; but there is nothing certain. Adieu. Sincerely yours.

N° XXXVII.

Mr. WHITAKER to EDWARD GIBBON, Esq.

DEAR SIR,

I THANK you very cordially for your letter of criticisms upon Fingal and myself. It is such an one as a friend should write and I wish to receive.

And

And I cannot but observe, that our acquaintance, so sensibly and properly begun, seems for that reason to promise a much longer continuance than the customary intimacies of the world.

Your remark upon the dramatic poem of Comala struck me very strongly upon my first reading it. It is quite new, and equally acute and ingenious. The elder son of Severus was not denominated Caracalla, at the time of his father's or his own expedition into Caledonia. And yet, perhaps, in the fond credulity of a man that admires the poems of Ossian, and has built too much upon them to allow them materially affected by any interpolations, I see the objection, as I reflect more upon it, losing gradually its force, and at last resolving into nothing.

And this I apAt least, it canthe objection (I That the poems

It proceeds upon a supposition, that, if not true itself, makes the other useless. This is, That the poems in general, and Comala in particular, were either written at the time of the transactions recorded in them; or with a sacred regard to the names then borne by the agents. prehend not to be really the case. not be proved. And, till it is, think) has nothing to rest upon. in general were not written at the time, is plain from a variety of circumstances, in which the author, like our Milton, full of his own feelings in the blindness and solitude of age, frequently leaves his subject, and comes home, as it were, to his own business and bosom. And that this of Comala was not, is demonstrable, because the author was not then born perhaps, and was certainly in his

infancy only. This poem, therefore, like all the rest, was written many years after the fact, and probably, like them, in the later stages of Ossian's life; certainly not till the middle period of it, when the fervours of the youthful warrior were tempered by years into the steadier glow of manhood and poetry. He then appears as a renowned bard, the well-known voice of Cona. And then, employing the hours of peaceful inactivity in composing his poems, he would naturally, I suppose, make use of the names, whatever the actors might have borne at the time, that were most familiar to his countrymen when he wrote. This would certainly be his mode of acting, I think; and, if the name of Antoninus had been sunk for years in that of Caracalla, the poet would be obliged indeed to make a sort of poetical anachronism, and use the latter appellation instead of the former.

That the name of Caracalla was the general one attributed to the son of Severus in the empire, and consequently by the nations bordering upon it, is plain, I think, from its transmission to the present times, and the popular use of it over all Europe. The concurrence of all modern writers in the hame must have resulted from some common principle of agreement, the popularity and familiarity of it among them. And accordingly Bede, who mentions the emperor by the title of Bassianus and Antoninus in one place, speaks of him in another under the name of Antoninus cognomento Caracalla (p. 20. Smith). This therefore being his popular title, when Ossian wrote, he would naturally use it in his poems. The name of Bassianus was

never

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never known probably among the Caledonians. That of Antoninus would be too indistinct, and not point out the person intended with sufficient particularity. But that of Caracalla would answer every difficulty: it was at once popular and specific; and the anticipation was of little moment in itself, and in the eye of poetry, especially, of none at all.

This seems to me a just and fair account of that little anachronism, if it can be so called, which your eye, my friend, has first found out in the poems of Ossian. And this comes directly to the point, I think, and without any acknowledgment of interpolations in them. Could such be proved, we must give up the authenticity of the poems as to every historical purpose. Had such been made, they must have detected themselves and we have sufficient authority to say, that no such were made. "On Mr. Macpherson's return from the Highlands with the poems in their original state," says Dr. Blair, "he set himself to translate under the eye of some who were acquainted with the Galic language, and looked into his manuscripts; and by a large publication, afterwards, made an appeal to all the natives of the Highlands and islands of Scotland, whether he had been faithful to his charge, and done justice to their well-known and favourite poems." The Doctor accordingly informs us, that he had applied by letters himself to several persons of credit and honour, who were natives of the Highlands and Isles, and well acquainted with the poems and the language, desiring to know their real opinion of the translation ; and

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