PREFACE.

AMONG educated Englishmen Macpherson com-
monly passes for an audacious impostor who
published his own compositions as the work of
an ancient writer, and received due punishment
at the hands of Dr. Johnson. The historians
of literature compare him with Chatterton, and
brand him as a forger. Even those who re-
frain from giving him a harsh name treat him
with doubt and hesitation. An equal obscurity
envelops his life and actions and the nature of
his work; and the result of ignorance or mis-
conception is that he has obtained something
less than justice.

If none but the great deserved a biography,
this book would not have been written. For Mac-
pherson was in no sense a great man: he was
a miscellaneous writer of considerable talent,
a busy journalist, a member of parliament, an
agent for an Indian prince, a popular and
prosperous citizen; and, beyond the fact that

he brought out the Ossianic poems at the age of
twenty-five, he did little in the sixty years of
his life that would entitle him to permanent
remembrance. This work of his youth was, as
he declared, translated from Gaelic fragments
found in the Scottish Highlands.
By its

wonderful success, and its no less wonderful
influence on literature, both in England and
on the Continent, it gave him, in his own day, a
/world-wide reputation. Literary fashions have
suffered many changes in the century that has
passed since his death and Macpherson's repu-
tation no longer exists; but his work retains
an historical interest of a curious and unique
character. It is strange evidence of the insta-
bility of literary fame that poems which, three
generations ago, were everywhere in vogue and
everywhere imitated-which appealed to the
feelings of all the cultured classes in Europe,
and excited the enthusiasm even of a Goethe, a
Byron, and a Napoleon-should now be almost
forgotten.

The origin, reception, and extraordinary effect

of the Ossianic poems form a chapter, hitherto
unwritten, in the literary history of the eight-
eenth century; and to attempt to write it is, I
trust, at least a respectable endeavour. I have
thrown it into the form of a biography because
the question of the authenticity of the poems
largely turns on Macpherson's actual proceed-
ings, and his personal character and attain-
ments; and thus it is that some interest still
attaches to the details of his life, so far as they
can be discovered.

While I believe that, on the whole, he has
been greatly slandered, he is certainly no hero;
and I hope that I am not afflicted, in regard

to him, with what has been called the lues
boswelliana, or the disease of admiration. I hope
also that I am free from any suspicion of
national prejudice; I have not the honour of
being a Scotsman. My curiosity about so wide
and perplexing a subject as the Ossianic con-
troversy was aroused by an accident; and one
of the recognised ways of getting rid of a
burden is to write a book on it.

I have been fortunate in obtaining some information from unpublished sources in the British Museum and elsewhere. My best thanks are due to the Marquess of Abergavenny for kindly permitting me to make use of a series of Macpherson's letters preserved in the library at Eridge; and to Mr. Brewster Macpherson of Belleville for the reproduction of Romney's portrait of his ancestor. I am also grateful for assistance rendered by friends, notably by Miss Mary Grant (of Kilgraston) and by Mr. John Cameron Grant (of Glenmoriston).

May 21, 1894.