months he hesitated. However ready he may have been to give up his position as a tutor, his prospect of obtaining a definite livelihood would undoubtedly suffer by doing so. His whole attitude at the time, when it is remembered that he was barely twenty-four, was not of a kind to lend itself to suspicion. Hume was taken with him, though he afterwards had occasion to alter his opinion. "We have endeavoured," he wrote, "to put Mr. Macpherson on a way of procuring us more of these wild flowers. He is a modest, sensible, young man, not settled in any living, but employed as a private tutor in Mr. Graham of Balgowan's family, a way of life which he is not fond of. We have, therefore, set about a subscription of a guinea or two guineas apiece, in order to enable him to quit that family, and undertake a mission into the Highlands, where he hopes to recover more of these fragments." To stimulate interest in the undertaking, Blair arranged that some of the leaders of rank and taste in Edinburgh should meet at a dinner to which Macpherson was invited. Lord Elibank played a great part at it, together with Robertson, Home, Adam Ferguson, and many others, who were all very anxious to forward the scheme. After much conversation with Macpherson, it was agreed that he should disengage himself from all other employment, and set out without delay on a poetical mission throughout the Highlands; and as his circumstances did not admit of his engaging in this at his own expense, the whole cost of his journey was to be defrayed by a collection raised from those present at the meeting, and any other friends who might be disposed to assist them. Robert Chalmers undertook to collect the money, and to act "I remember well," said Blair,1 as treasurer. "that when the company was about to break up, and I was going away, Mr. Macpherson followed me to the door, and told me that from the spirit of that meeting he now for the first time entertained the hope that the undertaking to which I had so often prompted him would be attended with success; that hitherto he had imagined they were merely romantic ideas which I had held 1 1 High. Soc. Rep., App., 58. In the face of so much testimony to the contrary, it is impossible to prove, what has been often idly asserted, that Macpherson's reluctance was not genuine. Further, there is no evidence to show that it was he who urged that the Fragments in question were parts of an epic poem. Blair's strenuous insistence on this point in his Critical Dissertation points to the probability that he, and not Macpherson, broached the idea. Macpherson's allusion to the "romantic ideas" which Blair held out to him, is important in this connection, and has not, I think, attracted out to him; but he now saw them likely to be realised, and should endeavour to acquit himself so as to give satisfaction to all his friends." Money was freely promised at the dinner; and a subscription list, opened in the Parliament House, brought in £60. Macpherson gave up his tutorship, and prepared to undertake the search. We learn from Mrs. Montagu that he received £100 to defray the expenses of his journey.1 sufficient attention. It is true that in the first note to Temora, bk. i., he says that the title of epic was imposed on that poem by himself. But that was in 1763, subsequent to Blair's Dissertation, which Macpherson then accepted as the most authoritative criticism. CHAPTER V. THE ENTHUSIASM IN EDINBURGH.-ANCIENT GAELIC THE popular fashion in literature at the end of in the remote valleys of the north was perfectly genuine; and so far was it from being confined to a third- or fourth-rate literary clique, that it was the first writers of the time who were most completely carried away by it. Men so different in mental qualities, in literary aims, tastes, and capacities, as Blair, Hume, and Gray, while they varied in their opinion of the merits of this poetry, shared the common astonishment to the full, and, as appears by the evidence, were more eager than Macpherson himself to collect as much of it as could be found. It will help us to realise their enthusiasm if we remember that they formed their opinion solely on the translator's version. The criticism of the day was a criticism of taste and sentiment; with a few notable exceptions, it was the elegance and refinement of so-called polite learning' rather than any scientific precision, that made the strongest appeal. Of the real nature, origin, and history of the poems, the critics knew nothing; and in order to arrive at a fair understanding of Macpherson's work, and of the way in which he dealt with his materials, a slight knowledge of these matters will be |