We must now come to the testimony of the Caledo nians themselves, who were surely the most competent judges in such a matter.
And here a few preliminary remarks appear necessary.
It is not denied that many poems, for ages under the name of Ossian and other bards, were current among the Caledonians. The Fingalian heroes were familiar to their oars from their infancy. Their bards often referred to their exploits when they wished to rouse their hearers to deeds of valour.
Now, the question is, could a whole nation, composed of men of honour and education, have been, and still be, so infatuated and so unprincipled, as gratuitously to join Mr. Macpherson in the most daring literary imposture that ever the world witnessed ? On this point, Dr. John son's illiberal remarks deserve only reprobation; for such is the length to which he carried his partial, malignant hostility to Mr. Macpherson, and therefore to Ossian, that he broadly asserts, that, for the honour of their country, the Highlanders would sacrifice every principle of truth and probity. To believe that they would do so, requires much more faith than to believe that a bard of the third or fourth century could compose poems such as Ossian's. Here also we must remark, that they were competent judges; and that, if Mr. Macpherson, or any body else, attempted to impose upon them spurious compositions, they would be he first to detect the fallacy, and to exe crate the author of it. We have been long acquainted with the irascibility of the Highland character upon this subject. In the course of extensive inquiries to satisfy our own curiosity, or to remove what we counted reasona ble scruples, we found it difficult to obtain a patient hear ing, the moment we insinuated that such existed. We uniformly met the same line of conduct for which Mr. Macpherson has been so severely blamed. Said one gentleman, in answer to a question as to the authenticity of the poems translated by Mr. Macpherson, 0 Do you believe your own existence ? We think the Highlanders insulted when such pains have been taken to convince those who will not believe the evidence of their senses." No doubt one Highlander, Mr. Shaw, a native of Arran, though once a firm believer in the authenticity of these poems, retracted his opinion, and wrote against them with a degree of violence which can scarcely be reconciled with impartiality. Cis unbelief seems founded upon this fact, that he could not find any, or hardly any, of the poems translated by Mr. Macpherson, any where in the Highlands or Islands of Scotland. This has puzzled more than Mr. Shaw. But we think that Mr. Clark, author of the Caledonian Bards, might have satisfied him upon this head. For further information, we refer to the notes and supplemental observations, following Cesarotti's Dissert. Ossian. vol. iii. ; and to Sir John Sinclair's Dissertation, vol. i. Mr. Shaw, however, might have found parts of the identical poems translated by Mr. Macpherson, which are referred to in the Appendix to the Highland Society's Report, and some of which have been published in 1786, by Mr. Guillies, a bookseller in Perth. We however, here also must stop, and refer for further information to Mr. Shaw's Inquiry; his Reply to Mr. Clark; and to Clark's Defence, especially Shaw Shaw.
Before we dismiss this part of the subject, we must quote two passages from the late Dr. John Smith, minister at Campbellton, one regarding Mr. Macpherson's mode of procedure in arranging the poems, so as to form a con sistent whole ; another stating his own mode, from which he was led to infer that Mr. Macpherson could not have done otherwise. " With regard." says he, in one of his letters to Mr. Henry Mackenzie, published in the Ap
pendix to the Highland Society's Report, p. 75, " ter the degree of liberty used by Mr. Macpherson in his transla tion, it is a point on which it is difficult to decide. With better materials and superior talents, his arrangement was far beyond any thing I could pretend to. But I am con vinced from experience, that he must have followed the same process. He must have not only used a discretionary power, or critical acumen, in combining and arranging the scattered parts of poems, as was done by those who col lected the books of Homer; but he must also have used his judgment in comparing one edition with another, se lecting or rejecting words, lines, and stanzas, now from one, and then from another, in order to make one cor rect edition, from which he would make his translation. He may sometimes •have added, here and there, a con necting line or sentence, or may have perhaps cast one away, without deviating, in the main, from the strict sense and sentiment of his author; but the 'exact degree of liberty which he took can hardly be ascertained." In his third letter to Mr. Mackenzie, dated Campbell ton, June 21, 1802, after some very pertinent observations, he writes, " that, at least, the stamina, the bones, sinews, and strength of a great part of the poems now ascribed to him (Ossian) are ancient, may, I think, be maintained on many good grounds. But that some things modern may have been superinduced, will, if not allowed, be at least believed, on grounds of much probability ; and, to sepa rate precisely the one from the other, is more than the translator himself, were he alive. could now do, if he had not begun to do so from the beginning." (P. 90.) Dr. Smith, as we read in his addenda to his Disserta tion on the authenticity of the poems which he himself had pulished in 1787, and a translation of which he had pub lished some years before, candidly states the process which he himself pursued. and which every one, in similar cir cumstances, as we know from experience, must pursue. "After the materials were collected, the next labour was to compare the different editions ; to shake off several parts that were manifestly spurious ; to bring together some episodes that appeared to have relation to one another, though repeated separately, and to restore to their proper places some incidents that seemed to have run from one poem into another. I am very confident, that the poems so arranged arc different from all the other editions. They have taken a certain degree of regularity and of art, in comparison with the disunited and irregular manner of the original. The building is not entire, but we have still the grand ruins of it." (See Cesarotti's Dissert. Oss vol. iii. and Note T.) In his preface to the Gaelic poems which were published under the patronage, and chiefly at the expence, of the Highland Society of London, in 1787, he speaks of them in the following terms : " He hopes that, with all their imperfections, these poems have still so much merit as to give the reader some idea of what they once had been ; that the venerable ruins are a suffi cient monument of the former grandeur of the edifice." Considering these candid statements by so pious and so honourable a judge, how could Mr. Shaw, or any body else, find such exact poems as Mr. Maspherson or he translated and published. Mr. Macpherson, we know from a letter of his now before us, written in 1792, and from other sources to be afterwards noticed, laboured most anxiously to purify the poems which he translated from every thing modern. We are, however, far from admitting that in this he succeeded, or could have succeeded.