"What does Becket mean by the originals of 'Fingal' and other poems of Ossian, which he advertises to have lain in his shop?"

*

Now here we have it under Boswell's hand that while Johnson was asserting that Macpherson had no originals, and that he had never offered to show them, he was at that very time aware where they were placed, and had been invited by advertisement to see them. But in the latter part of his letter Johnson betrays his knowledge of the fact, for he says that if old manuscripts should now be mentioned, he should suppose them another proof of Scotch conspiracy in national falsehood. Does this show the great love of truth" and of “inquiry" which he so ostentatiously professes, and which he wishes the public to believe belongs exclusively to himself? It is to be regretted that Macpherson's letter to Johnson has not been preserved, for it might have thrown more light on this controversy, but Boswell gives the following, dictated to him by Johnson, as being the purport of the reply he had made :

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"I received your foolish and impudent letter. Any violence offered me I shall do my best to repel, and what I cannot do for myself the law shall do for me. I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian.

"What would you have me retract? I thought your book an imposture, and I think it an imposture still. For this opinion I have given my reasons to the public, which I dare you to refute. Your rage I defy. * Boswell, 6th ed., vol. ii. p. 310.

Your abilities, since your Homer, are not so formidable, and what I hear of your morals inclines me to pay regard, not to what you shall say, but to what you shall prove. You may print this if you will."

In these letters there is not only a want of fairness, but also a perversion or utter ignorance of fact. Johnson says that Gaelic was never, till lately, a written language. Now, as before stated, although many manuscripts have no doubt been lost, there are still some to be found in private collections, and there are at this moment no fewer than 65 in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh, some of which are as old as the eleventh century; and in Ireland they greatly exceed this number. In the next place, he says that no one in the Highlands could repeat six lines of Ossianic poetry. Ample evidence has been produced to refute that statement. Yet the great authority quoted to this day against the authenticity of Ossian's poems is Dr Johnson, which tends to prove how few have studied the matter for themselves. Not only is the idea that a whole nation could be capable of contributing to the forgery of these manuscripts an extravagant absurdity, but the resort to such a rabid calumny as a reason for not listening to evidence indicates a state of moral blindness incompatible with dispassionate judgment.

The next assailant of Macpherson was Mr Malcolm Laing, an Edinburgh barrister, and an Orkney proprietor, who entered on his task with all the dogmatism of Johnson and the anti-Celtic antipathy of his countrymen. In 1805 he republished Macpherson's

translation with numerous notes, in which he ransacked all the authors, ancient and modern, for parallel passages to those in Macpherson's Ossian. This species of criticism has long been looked upon with distrust; for as similes are for the most part taken from natural objects, there must to a certain extent be a correspondence between different authors, though without any plagiarism. How far Mr Laing's analogies are fair and just will be seen presently. But, in the first place, let us see how far his deductions are authorised by his premises. The animus with which Mr Laing set about his task may be gathered from the following:* "His private character may well be spared; and it is sufficient to observe that his morals were not such as to refute the charge which I have made, that, with a genius truly poetical, he was one of the first literary impostors in modern times." This is truly Johnsonian, and rather a begging of the question.

Mr Laing says that the words given by Dr Ferguson of the single combat of Swaran and Cuthullin is not in Ossian, but is to be found in the Irish ballad of Fingal and Magnus. On what authority does he make this statement? Miss Brooke publishes the ballad of Magnus, but it is not there.

Mr Laing founds on the similarity of the description of Fingal's Standard by Macpherson, and that in the poem of Magnus, as a proof of Macpherson's imposture, while, in fact, it is evidence of the authenticity of the Ossianic poems, and of Laing's and of Laing's own ignorance of material facts. For Macpherson was never in Ireland, and

* See addition to sketch of Macpherson's life in Laing's preface.

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could not have seen the original of the poem of Magnus till published by Miss Brooke with a translation in 1789, whereas Macpherson's translation appeared in 1761. The Battle of Gaura, which is the subject of the poems of Fingal and of Magnus, was fought in Ulster by the forces of Cuthullin and Fingal against Swaran ; and their similarity only proves that these poems, though differing in version, were common to the traditions of both countries.

In regard to the fragments given to Mr Home by Macpherson, at Moffat in 1759, Mr Laing says: "In a day or two he produced the fragment on the death of Oscar, which of all others is the most demonstratively a forgery, and which Macpherson himself was obliged afterwards to appropriate to another Oscar, the son of Caruth. When the very first poem produced by Macpherson is an almost avowed fabrication, it is evident that, on finding the genuine Erse ballads unfit for translation, he could not resist the temptation to vindicate that neglected merit of which he was conscious by submitting his own poetry, which the public had hitherto overlooked, to a distinguished judge as a relic of antiquity."

This is a fair specimen of Mr Laing's species of criticism. It will be remembered that when Macpherson met Mr Home at Moffat accidentally in 1759, he was only twenty-one years of age. Mr Home having heard from Dr A. Ferguson, himself a Highlander, that there were remains of ancient Gaelic poetry in the Highlands, approached Macpherson on the subject; and on learning that he had some fragments in his possession which he

had taken down from recitation, he requested him to translate two of them, which Macpherson did, after some reluctance, fearing that a prose translation would not do justice to the original; but eventually he did translate them into English prose, and gave them to Mr Home, who showed them to Drs Blair and Ferguson, by whom they were much admired. It turned out that one of these fragments, 'The Death of Oscar;' was applicable to another Oscar than the son of Ossian, but on what ground does Mr Laing pronounce it a forgery? Does he mean to say that Macpherson never heard these poems recited in Gaelic as he took them down? if so, what is his authority ?-what object could Macpherson have in deceiving Mr Home? Mr Laing says, "That he could not resist the temptation to vindicate that neglected merit of which he was conscious by submitting his own poetry, which the public had hitherto overlooked, to a distinguished judge as a relic of antiquity." But as the translation was in prose and not in poetry, the whole of Mr Laing's visionary theory of fabrication falls to the ground. In the In the very next paragraph Mr Laing says, on the authority of a Mr Laurie, who pretends to have letters from Mr Macpherson, which are not produced, " that his Highland pride was alarmed at appearing only as a translator to the world." Where, then, was "the temptation," which, according to Mr Laing, "he could not resist"-the temptation to represent "his own poetry as a relic of antiquity"?

Dr Blair obtained from Macpherson a translation of all the fragments he had, being fifteen in number, and