OS'S IAN'S POEMS, the name given to a collection of poems, alleged to have been the production of Ossian, the son of Fingal, a Scottish bard, who lived in the third century. They were first given to the world in an English version by James M`Pherson, Esq , in 1760, with the assur ance that they were translations made by himself from ancient Erse manuseri pl s which he hail collected in the 'Highlands of Scotland ; and such was the enthusiasm which their appearance excited, that they may he almost. said to have given a new tone to poetry throughout all Europe. There were not, however, wanting many distinguished persons who, from the first, denied their authenticity; foremost among whom was Dr. Johnson, who boldly pro nounced the whole of the poems ascribed to Ossian to be forgeries; and his opinion was corroborated by House, Gibbon, and many others, who defied M'Pherson to produce a manuscript of any Erse poem of earlier date than the sixteenth century. On the other hand, M'Pherson's asser tions as to the genuineness of the poems found warm supporters in Dr. Blair, Dr. Henry, Lord Baines, and many other distinguished names, and almost to a man in the whole body of the Highlanders. In this unsettled state the controversy remained till the year 1800, when Mal colm Laing, so well known for his histor ical labors, in a Dissertation appended to the second volume of his History of Scotland, endeavored to establish, from historical and internal evidence, that the so called poems of Ossian are absolutely and totally spurious. The sensation cre ated by this Dissertation was unprece dented. Many converts were made to
the opinions therein set forth ; but the general disbelief in the authenticity of the poems was not complete till I805, when a committee of the Highland Soci ety of Edinburgh, which had been ap pointed in 1797 to inquire into their na ture and authenticity, reported to the effect "that they had not been able to obtain any one poem the same in title and tenor with the poems of Ossian." Since that period the controversy, so far as it regards their translation from Erse manuscripts, may be said to be terminat ed. But although these poems had never been committed to writing, or rather have not been handed down in writing, there can be, we believe, but little doubt that many of them still exist in the Highlands of Scotland, in a dress not very different from that in which they were rendered by M'Pherson into English, having been committed to memory, and transmitted from one bard or storyteller to another in regular succession; and consequently their pretensions to be regarded as his torical authority on many points can scarcely he denied. Their scene is some times laid in Scotland, but more fre quently in Ireland; and they may be justly considered the Iliad and Odyssey of the Celtic race of the two islands, handed down by tradition only—what the poems of Homer were, in all likelihood, to the Greeks themselves before- they were acquainted with the art of writ ing.