་ CHAPTER IX. THE CHARGE OF FORGERY. CONTEMPORARY HATRED OF THE SCOTCH.—THE "NORTH BRITON".-CHURCHILL.-BLAIR'S "DISSERTATION".-PUBLICATION OF "TEMORA ".-JOHNSON'S ATTITUDE. CESAROTTI. CHANGE IN MACPHERSON'S CONDUCT. BOSWELL.HUME'S LETTERS TO BLAIR.-DIRECT TESTIMONY FROM THE HIGHLANDS ITS RESULT. It is a far cry from a free or even a pretentious treatment of authentic materials to sheer imposture; and if allowance is made for the canons of criticism accepted in the eighteenth century, it will hardly be said that in giving an artistic form to his materials Macpherson was committing any very heinous crime. In the way in which he afterwards defended the authenticity of his work when it was impugned with astonishing vehemence, he made grave mistakes; but his error was in some measure due to the virulence of the attack. That the poems never previously existed in the form and shape in which he gave them to the world was proclaimed as though the fact took away all credit from the translator, and as though in his preface and dissertation he expressly denied the composite character of his work. A plagiarist must be uncommonly candid who quotes the source of his inspiration at the foot of his page; and Macpherson has never been accused of excessive candour. Nevertheless, his attempt to illustrate the text of his work by quoting passages from well-known authors-perhaps also his honesty in showing whence he obtained some of the niceties of his translation-was turned against him, and he was directly accused of the most brazen forgery. Although for the success of his venture Macpherson had to some extent depended on the attention which had recently been drawn to the Highlands, he was in the same respect peculiarly unfortunate; for he soon found his work not only assailed with all the recognised weapons of criticism but also maliciously resented as a piece of Scotch impertinence. There can be no doubt that the bitterness with which it was attacked was due to the fierce hatred of the Scotch which then prevailed in London. For centuries Scotchmen had been regarded as foreigners, and nothing that had occurred به was a since the Union had made them popular. In political life they formed a compact and isolated body, subject to ignominious disabilities and peculiarly liable to corruption. The rising had put the seal to this national hatred; and thereafter if a writer hailed from north of the Tweed, the fact was passport to abuse. Hume himself, who had seen the first volume of his History attacked with extraordinary rancour by all parties alike, was so much disgusted by this rage against his countrymen, that he more than once resolved never to set foot again on English ground, nor have anything further to do with what he contemptuously called "the barbarians who inhabit the banks of the Thames". Garrick was afraid to play Macbeth in tartan and kilt for fear of thereby damning the piece; and in Macklin's Man of the World the ridicule of the Scotch in the person of Sir Pertinax MacSycophant was received with the wildest applause. If for many years before and after Macpherson's productions appeared, it was commonly held that no good thing could come out of Scotland, it is clear that with 1 See Doran's Jacobite London, ii. 350. 1 whatever interest they were awaited, they had little chance of fair treatment. No Scotch work could have appeared at a more unfavourable opportunity than was offered by the close of the year 1761. In October the government of Pitt, who, by a combination of splendid abilities, had raised the fame and prosperity of the country to a height surpassed at no previous period of its history, was succeeded by a Tory reaction, with Bute, a Scotchman and a Jacobite, as the young King's favourite and chief Minister. The Court was crowded with his countrymen, most of them needy adventurers and eager placehunters, at once audacious, subservient, and notoriously corrupt. The change provoked a storm of indignation which pervaded every class outside the Court. Bute himself attained a degree of unpopularity such as has seldom fallen to the lot of any English Minister; he was subjected to every kind of insult; he was burnt in effigy, attacked in the streets, and at last compelled, in fear of his life, to hire a gang of butchers and prizefighters to protect him. The literature of the day was deeply infected with the venom of this enmity; and for a glimpse of it we have only to turn to the savage onslaught of Churchill, or to the notorious libels of the North Briton. Macpherson was known to be a friend and dependent of Bute, and his Ossian supplied an obvious butt for national ridicule. Wilkes had his fling at the Scotch in The Poetry Professor, a tirade in verse affixed to the number of the North Briton for 27th November, 1762. He bade the poets of the day keep their hands off the ancient writers: "Oh forbear To spoil with sacrilegious hand . Better be native in thy verse- "When England's genius droops her wing Macpherson leads the flaming van, Laird of the New Fingalian clan. Churchill's mockery in his Prophecy of Eamine was in the same strain: "Thence issued forth, at great Macpherson's call, That old, new epic pastoral, Fingal. |