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with an implied reference to himself, that "the translator "who cannot equal his original, is incapable of expressing its "beauties."

poems as

Here then, if there is a meaning in words, Macpherson Claims the vindicates and appropriates the poems expressly to himself. his own. He intimates almost in direct terms, that he, the author who without increasing his genius, has, in the space of eleven years, improved his language, and restrained the exuberance of his imagery; the writer, equally qualified to excel· in prose and verse; the supposed translator, who alone, like Varius, can equal his original; to avoid the invidious opposition of national prejudices, (a serious consideration in the sale of a work,) has ascribed his poems to a remote antiquity, and to another name. The applause of reviewers was re-echoed by Blair and Kaims, whose injudicious, yet ingenious criticisms had placed the Celtic bard on a level with Milton, Virgil, and with Homer himself. The laborious Henry, the fantastical Whitaker, adopted Ossian as genuine history; and Macpherson, exulting in their applause, and in his own success, entered the preceding caveat, as a guarded, yet solemn protestation to the world, lest the poems should descend to posterity, while the real author was defrauded of his fame. It was still necessary not to disabuse his countrymen, nor by a more explicit declaration, to disappoint their credulous hopes of an epic poem in Earse, His dispute with Johnson, and the scurrilous controversy between Shaw and Clark, taught him that a moral character should still be sustained; and he continued to fluctuate till his death, between the care of his reputation, as a man of veracity, and his pretensions to the merit of an original poet, which he was desirous to assume. A subscription of a thousand pounds, from his countrymen in the East Indies, which he had retained in his own hands while alive, was bequeathed to his friends, to

His works

estimated.

publish the Earse version which he had formerly prepared. With the same hesitation between the adverse characters of translator and author, he provided a niche for himself among the English poets, after his decease, and if not the first translator, was certainly the first poet from Badenoch, whose remains were transported to Westminster Abbey.

3. I know not by what arguments it is possible to transfer to Ossian, or to the third century, the poems which Macpherson has produced and uniformly claimed as his own. It is not sufficient to affirm that the translator has suppressed the originals, in order to appropriate the poems to himself; for no motive could have induced him to destroy the original MSS. when he left an Earse version to be published, unless these were merely the Irish ballads, the preservation of which would have exposed the whole deceit. The mediocrity of his other productions is not sufficient; for the style of Ossian may convince the world, that he must creep upon the earth unless he soars sublime, It discovers bold experiments in language, rich sentimental description, if sometimes pathetic, more frequently turgid than sublime; but contains no accurate delineation of character, no observations on human nature, no research into human actions, no artful transitions, nor talents for narration or plot; nothing in fact, either chaste or sober, that could be transferred with advantage to the historical page. In Dow's History of Indostan, in which Gibbon justly suspected that the style of Ferishda was improved by that of Ossian, he indulged the epic extravagance of his genius uncontrolled. Even his Introduction to the History of Britain, is grossly embellished with a Celtic fable, of a bard who visited the Fortunate Islands for a few days, and dicovered that two centuries had elapsed on his return 66. His His

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tory of Britain is a dull and hasty chronological abstract from Ralph, and from the State Papers collected by Carte and himself. But the plot and incidents of Ossian, its tumid Preface and Dissertations, demonstrate that, however capable of improving upon a few facts, he was unqualified for the attainment, or insensible to the value, of a judicious arrangement, solid argument, or profound investigation. When we consider Ossian alone, or the tempta tion to emerge from an obscure indigence, the acknowledgment which he has made, might atone for a deception so grateful to his countrymen, had he not bequeathed such spurious originals as we have examined, to be published by his friends; one of whom I know to be a man of worth and letters, though a dupe to the imposture, as I was once myself. Instead of being precluded, at a maturer age, from the cultivation of poetry, he might have acquired a more durable and legitimate reputation, had he trusted, like Thomson in the same obscure situation, to the native force of his own genius; nor availed himself of the national credulity by an imposture not so difficult as Psalmanazar's though more successful. But when his impure hands are imposed on history, the misquotations and fictions detected in his Introduction to the History of Britain 67, and his cold malignity towards the most illustrious characters, should teach us to receive his Original Papers with extreme distrust; and we must regret that the State Papers of the Stuarts and

67 Genuine Hist. of the Britons asserted, 297. Whitaker's politeness to a man whom he had convicted of "such a gross perversion even of his own quotations, such plain and manifest corruptions even of his own authorities, such erazings of records, such falsifications of histories," forms a signal contrast to his scurrilous abuse of the late Dr. Robertson, whom, from a minute examination of the most disputed passages in hisHistory of Scotland, I cannot hesitate to pronounce one of the most faithful of his toriaus.

Test of the authen

ticity of Ossian.

of William, by some strange fatality, were reserved for the translator of Ossian and Sir John Dalrymple.

4. After all, these arguments are easily answered, but not by abuse. A single manuscript is worth a thousand arguments. If a single poem of Ossian's in manuscript, such as translated by Macpherson, of a decent length, and the MS. indisputably of an older date than the present century, be produced and lodged in a public library, I shall return among the first to our national creed. But popular arguments are no answer to pointed objections or historical facts; much less will abuse suffice to restore the lost authenticity of Ossian's Poems. The most bigotted must acknowledge, that the refined poetry which they admire so much, was more likely to be produced by a cultivated genius of the present, than by an illiterate bard of the third century; and the reputed countrymen of Ossian may rest satisfied with this consolation; that the highlands of Scotland have at least given birth to an Epic poet in modern

times.

Above three years have elapsed, since this Dissertation was first published; but no answer has appeared as yet, and not a single MS. of the Earse original has ever been produced. My arguments, however, have received additional confirmation from the discovery of two letters from Hume to Blair, written in the interval between the first and second editions of Blair's Dissertation. The testimonies published in Blair's Appendix to the second edition, were collected in consequence of these letters, but the reader will observe,'that Blair did not comply with the admonitions of his friend; "that it were suitable to his can"dour, and most satisfactory also to the reader, to publish "all the answers to all the letters he should write, even though of the answers should make somewhat against his

some

own opinion in this affair." Instead of printing the testimonies entire as he received them, he published an imperfect abstract, in which the evidence was unavoidably corrected and improved; softened when extravagant, and tinged throughout with his own prejudices, and preconceived opinions. From the perusal of the original testimonies, which relate in fact to the Irish ballads, I do not hesitate to affirm, that had they been published entire, they would have appeared as little satisfactory to the world, as they did to Hume, when he informed Gibbon, "that (( any positive evidence on the subject, ought never to be "regarded." But the testimonies originally procured by Blair, or collected since by the Highland Society at Edinburgh, have never been published, and in all probability never will; for a reason obvious to those who have seen them, that their very extravagance would confute themselves. From this censure, I must except three letters to the Highland Society, from Dr. Fergusson, Dr. Blair, and Mr. John Home, which contain a plain attestation of facts, and which, with a letter from an early companion of Macpherson's in Badenoch, are sufficient, at least in my conception, to explain the origin of the whole imposture. But the reader perhaps will be more gratified with the perusal of Hume's letters, and of a letter from Warburton, than with any arguments of mine on the subject.

68

68 I need not add that the imposture was equally practised upon the three gentlemen whom I have named, and upon the public at large.

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