These half-confessions brought him into deep disgrace in the North, where the Ossianists were ready to do battle for Fingal against its own author. Claymores were shaken in the face of the apostate. A new edition of Ossian, published at Edinburgh in 1792, and afterwards reprinted at Glasgow, contains a vigorous preface. The writer deplores that Macpherson wished to keep the question of authenticity in a state of oracular suspense, and even seemed disposed to claim the whole, or at least a great part, of the poetry as his own composition. His attitude had been discussed by many Highlanders. "Their sentiments with respect to his conduct were uniform; and upon every occasion they made no scruple of expressing their indignation at such an instance of ungenerous and ungrateful ambiguity." Even Macpherson himself was thus treated at last as no better than one of the sceptics.

Meanwhile he was absorbed in other pursuits. He produced several historical works, and became an active politician and an indefatigable journalist. When Junius appeared, an adversary called Scae

that Macpherson was not incapable of sounding a blast on his own trumpet. He wrote a high-flown letter in praise of his Secret History of Great Britain, which he sent to his publisher with instructions that it should be inserted in a newspaper above the signature "Impartial." -Bailey Saunders, pp. 230-31. This should be compared with the remarks on the same subject in Ruddiman's Magazine (Laing i. li.): the resemblance is so striking as to suggest the same hand. Compare also Ruddiman, "It is presumed he sacrificed in secret to the muses," with the words "He had served his apprenticeship, though in secret, to the muses," in Macpherson's preface to his last edition of Ossian.

vola wrote letters against his letters: Scaevola was Macpherson. During the American War we find him in the service of Lord North, directing the ministerial press. He wrote articles and inspired reports, endeavouring (we are told) to persuade the people of England that all was going well at the front, that Cornwallis would yet do better than Burgoyne. Horace Walpole, a hostile critic, speaks of "Macpherson's daily column of lies." From Lord North's government he received a pension, which Walpole; in one place calls £600, in another £800. About the same time the Nabob of Arcot, who had quarrelled with the East India Company, made him his confidential agent in England. The service of this potentate was lucrative, and he quickly became a man of wealth. He entered Parliament, by the usual method of presentation, for a small borough in Cornwall, and retained his seat till the end.

The last years in Macpherson's life were the best. Grown rich and growing old, he turned his thoughts to the hills of his native Badenoch; and thither at last he returned, in another character than that of the poor schoolmaster who had left it so long before. Land was bought and a mansion built, which stood on a hillside among pine trees, looking forth far and wide upon the Spey. Macpherson was a hospitable and generous laird: tradition, in a region where it is tenacious, has preserved anecdotes that do him credit. Con

temporary accounts of his life at Kingussie are given by Mrs. Grant of Laggan, author of Letters from the Mountains, who, when he died in 1796, wrote of her friend in terms that show genuine grief :

"He was a very good-natured man; and now that he had got all his schemes of interest and ambition fulfilled, he seemed to reflect and grow domestic, and showed, of late, a great inclination to be an indulgent landlord, and very liberal to the poor; of which I could relate various instances, more tender and interesting than flashy or ostentatious. His heart and temper were originally good; his religious principles were, I fear, unfixed and fluctuating. But the primary cause that so much genius, taste, benevolence, and prosperity, did not produce or diffuse more happiness, was his living a stranger to the comforts of domestic life, from which unhappy connections excluded him. . .

"Such was poor James Macpherson, who certainly was worthy of a better fate. His death and the circumstances of it have impressed my mind in a manner I could not have believed. I think we are somehow shrunk, and our consequence diminished, by losing the only person of eminence among us. It is like extinguishing a light. His will, which was made some time before this period of anguish, was, alas, too strongly marked with that vanity and ostentation which threw a deep shade over many good qualities he really possessed. The parade of going to Westminster Abbey marks him out as the first man in the annals of time that, dying in the very spot where he was born, and where all his ancestors were buried, desired to have his bones carried out of his native country. There is a sum of £500 appointed to be laid out on a monument at Belleville

L

This monument, a shaft of grey and white marble, stands near Kingussie on a knoll close to the highway. It was by his own request that Macpherson was buried at Westminster. He lies in the south transept, almost by the side of Samuel Johnson, the only adversary who had worsted him during all his career of success.

CHAPTER VII

CONTINUED DEBATE

THE author of Ossian being gone, the dispute did not vanish with him; it has continued, fiercely or fitfully, to our own time. A moot point is always fascinating. Although the general verdict is against Macpherson, it has been challenged by many Germans, among them Jacob Grimm, by several Englishmen, and by a host of his own people. Underlying the controversy is a misunderstanding,—a failure to distinguish, as Macpherson himself has clearly done, between his elaborate works and the homely songs they were based on. In spite of all resemblances, Fingal is essentially different from the tales of Ossian and St. Patrick and the wild legend of the Muileartach. Even when this difference has been realised, the conclusion it suggests has been eluded; the more dignified poems, because of their dignity, being accepted as the more authentic.

The death of Macpherson having quickened interest in the problem, the Highland Society of Scotland1 resolved in 1797 to sift the whole

1 Now the Highland and Agricultural Society.