reasonable doubt that he did collect genuine snatches of ancient Gaelic song, and that he was encouraged by several cultivated friends to travel through the Highlands in 1759 in search of more. In 1760 he printed anonymously his Fragments of Ancient Gaelic Poetry, and in 1762 an epic, in six books, called Fingal, which he professed to have translated from Ossian. To this day it is undecided what were the exact materials which MacPherson used. Neither in the cases mentioned, nor in that of his Temora (1763), could he be induced to display his Gaelic originals. This led to his being accused of sheer forgery, and Dr. Johnson openly charged him with imposture. He replied that he copied the poetry of Ossian " from old MSS.,:' but these he obstinately declined to produce. Johnson declared the whole thing to be "another proof of Scotch conspiracy in national falsehood." But modern criticism has not dismissed the matter with such high-handedness. It is now Certain that Gaelic poetry attributed to or connected with < )ssian or Oisin had been known in the Highlands of Scotland since the sixteenth century, and it is further certain that snme of MacPherson's " translations" coincide with genuine Gaelic tradition. The original text, as it was called, of Ossian's poems, never forthcoming in MacPherson's life, was at last published in 1818, but it only made the darkness denser, for in large measure it was found to consist of MacPherson translated back into modern Gaelic, with admixture of fragments which were probably genuine and of considerable antiquity. It has been noted that in authentic Celtic romance the two cycles, the Fennian and the Ossianic, are never mingled, but that this is incessantly done by MacPherson. On the whole, it is probable that MacPherson was in possession, not indeed of MSS., but of copious fragments orally preserved, that he did not choose to admit their incoherency, and that he set himself to build around them a fictitious " epical" narrative, counting upon the credulity of his readers. Having once started this partial deception, he could never venture to withdraw his broad statements, and he descended to the grave under the stigma of forgery and falsehood. If he had been content to tell the plain truth, the great value of his paraphrases and expansions would have been more freely acknowledged, and Dr. Johnson need not have provided himself with " a stout oaken plant," nor have spoken of " the menaces of a ruffian."

James MacPherson

After the Portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds

MacPherson continued to lead an adventurous life, but added nothing more of value to literature. He took advantage of appointments in Florida and India to amass a comfortable fortune, and for sixteen years he was M.P. for Camelford, in Cornwall. He died at Badenoch, an estate which he had bought in his native county of Inverness-shire, on the 17th of February 1796, and was buried—marvellous to relate—in Westminster Abbey.

The leading incidents of his life have until quite lately remained obscure, for MacPherson was one of those men who love mystery for its

F I N G A L,

A N

ANCIENT EPIC POEM,

In SIX BOOKS: Together with feveral other P O E M S, compofed by

O S S I A N the Son of F I N G A t.

Tnnflatcd from the Galic Language,

By JAMliS M AC I-HERS ON. Rrliajafla fatrum. Vugil.

own sake.

From "fingal."

Son of the chief of generous steeds ! high-bounding king of spears. Strong arm in every perilous toil. Hard heart that never yields. Chief of the pointed arms of death. Cut down the foe ; let no white sail bound round dark Inistore. Be thine arm like thunder. Thine eyes like fire, thy heart of solid rock. Whirl round thy sword as a meteor at night, and lift thy shield like the flame of death. Son of the chief of generous steeds, cut down the foe ; destroy. — The hero's heart beat high. But Swaran came with battle. He cleft the shield of Gaul in twain ; and the sons of the desart fled.

Now Fingal arose in his might, and thrice he reared his voice. Cromla answered

around, and the sons of the desart stood still. — They bent their red faces to earth, ashamed at the presence of Fingal. He came like a cloud of rain in the days of the sun, when s!ow it rolls on the hill, and fields expect the shower. Swaran beheld the terrible king of Morven, and stopped in the midst of his course. Dark he leaned on his spear, rolling his red eyes around. Silent and tall he seemed as an oak on the banks of Lubar, which had its branches blasted of old by the lightning of heaven.—It bends over the stream, and the gray moss whistles in the wind : so stood the king. His thousands pour around the hero, and the darkness of battle gathers on the hill.

The greatest literary discovery, however, of the middle of the eighteenth century was the novel. In late years criticism has dwelt more and more seriously on the position of those who practically created the most entertaining and the most versatile of all the sections of modern literature. With due respect to the writers of fiction from the sixteenth century down to Defoe

and Marivaux, it was in the year 1740 that the European novel, as we understand it, began to exist. The final decay of the theatre led to the craving on the part of English readers for an amusement which should be to them what the seeing of comedies had been to their parents, and of tragedies to their grand-parents. The didactic plays of such writers as Lillo, who lived until 1739, were practically the latest amusements of the old school of playgoers, who were weary of drama, weary of the old pompous heroic story, of chronicles of pseudAtalantic scandal, of the debased picaresque romance. Something entirely new was wanted to amuse the jaded mind of Europe, and that new thing was invented by the fat little printer of Salisbury Court. SAMUEL Richardson conceived what Taine has called the "roman anti-romanesque," the novel which dealt entirely with a realistic study of the human heart set in a frame of contemporary middle-class manners, not in any way touched up or heightened, but depending for the interest it excited solely on its appeal to man's interest in the mirrored face of

Samuel Richardson

After the Portrait by Mawn Chamberlin

man.

It was a particularly fortunate thing that in this far-spreading work of Richardson's he was accompanied by several writers who were almost his coevals, who were not subjugated by his prestige, but each of whom pushed on the same important reform in a province peculiarly favourable to himself. In considering the first great blossoming of the English novel, we find that a single quarter of a century included all the great novels of the age, and that Richardson was neither imitated nor over-shadowed, but supported by such wholly original fellow-labourers as Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and Goldsmith. Each of our first five novelists presented a gift of his own to the new-born infant, prose fiction, and we must now consider what these gifts were.

Vol. in. \j

What was Richardson's addition to literature may be described in a condensed form as a combination of art in the progress of a narrative, force in the evolution of pathos, and morality founded upon a profound study of conduct. Of the group, he was the one who wrote least correctly; Richardson, as a pure man of letters, is the inferior, not merely of Fielding and Sterne, but of Smollett. He knows no form but the tedious and imperfect artifice

of a series of letters. He is often without distinction, always without* elegance and wit; he is pedantic, careless, profuse ; he seems to write for hours and hours, his wig thrown over the back of a chair, his stock ings down at heel. But the accidents of his life and temperament had inducted him into an extraordinary knowledge of the female heart; while his imagination permitted him to clothe the commonplace reflections of very ordinary people in fascinating robes of simple fancy. He was slow of speech and lengthy, but he had a magic gift which obliged every one to listen to him.

The minuteness of Richardson's observations of common life added extremely to the pleasure which his novels gave to readers weary of the vagueness, the empty fustian of the heroic romances. His pages appealed to the instinct in the human mind which delights to be told over again, and told in scrupulous detail, that which it knows already. His readers, encouraged by his almost oily partiality for the moral conventions, gave themselves up to him without suspicion, and enjoyed each little triviality, each coarse touch of life, each prosaic circumstance, with perfect gusto, sure that, however vulgar they might be, they would lead up to the triumph of virtue. What these readers were really assisting at was the triumph of anti-romantic realism.

Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) was the son of a London joiner, who, though "a quiet and inoffensive man," thought it wise, after expressing sympathy with the cause of Monmouth, to retire to Derbyshire, where, at a place and exact date

Illustration by Stothard to "Clarissa"