219 



writer the committee, by calling attention to his letters, seems to 

 rely. 



The Doctor still continues, in his letter, to prose about Gaelic 

 manuscripts, in verse as well as prose, which he says were, to his own 

 certain knowledge, in the hands of a family of "hereditary poets and 

 shenachies" of the name of Macmhurich; and he adds, "that the poems 

 contained in the manuscripts belonging to the Macmhuirichs, were 

 identically the same as those published by Mr. Macpherson, or nearly 

 so, seems to be abundantly probable." Leaving the writer and the com- 

 mittee in full possession of this seeming probability, let us proceed to 

 consider the remainder of the learned Doctor s letter. He tells us 

 that he had collected " around him all the persons who were able to 

 rehearse any parts of the poems published by Mr. Macpherson." 

 Observe, he does not produce any written parts of the poems ; all 

 depends upon memory, which we are told, in another place, is the 

 only sure preservative of ancient documents. Having assembled 

 these persons together, " he made them to rehearse, in his hearing, 

 the s.ewevdl fragments or detached pieces of these poems, which they 

 were able to repeat ;" and then he compared what they had repeated 

 with Mr. Macpherson's translation. . ly sijjKu.:'iu irjV)- mni 



It is a singular circumstance, deserving of notice, that notwith- 

 standing that oral tradition, according to the Society, was the only sure 

 preservative of ancient Gaelic poems, not one of these persons, who 

 had learned all they repeated from oral tradition, could rehearse more 

 than a few '* fragments or detached pieces of those poems." We say 

 a few, though the Doctor has said " several." We say this from the 

 paucity of the examples he has given us of the agreements between 

 these rehearsals and the Ossian of his friend. »\>«t**\> ."♦cn^'"" •v.""?':'>tf 



His first example is " The description of CuchuUin's chariot." — : 

 Fingal,^.\. ^ ,jiiw« fVar^ eswaatiorf -^i-.t 



VOL. XVI. G G 



