. 217 



say any such thing. He says he heard poems repeated, which seemed 

 to him to be the same with Macpherson's translation, but he could 

 ■not positively affirm that they were the same. 



It is a well known fact that about the time of this inquiry, and for 

 many years before, there were common in the Highlands and Islands 

 of Scotland, poems in the Gaelic language, relating to Fionn Mac 

 Cubhail, (Fim son of Coo-al) Ossian, Oscar, Goll Mac Morna, 

 (Macpherson's Gaul), Conan, Dermod, Fergus, Faolan, (Macpher- 

 son's Fillan,) Caoilte, &c., celebrating sometimes the hunting, and 

 sometimes the fighting exploits of these personages. From the Gaelic 

 poems published by Mr. Hill, by Gillies the Bookseller in Perth, and 

 by the late Doctor Young Bishop of Clonfert, in the Transactions 

 of the Royal Irish Academy, it is evident that these poems were 

 Irish, and that the heroes they celebrate were Irishmen. The simi- 

 larity of the names and of several of the stories in Macpherson's 

 Ossian, and in those Gaelic poems, would make them seein to be the 

 same, to a person who had no particular recollection of either. It 

 was this circumstance, doubtless, that made them seem the same to 

 Sir James Mc. Donald, and it is this that makes Macpherson's Ossian 

 seem to an Irishman identically the same as the poems he has been 

 accustomed to hear from his infancy, and to read, as the productions 

 of the Irish Ossian, or more properly Oisin. 



We have next to consider the letters of Doctor John Macpherson 

 to Doctor Blair. That gentleman, in his first letter, dated 14th 

 October, 1763, insinuates that the resistance given to Macpherson 

 and his Ossian, arose from a jealousy which the English entertained 

 against the Scotch, on account of " these noble monuments of 

 genius," (the poems,) and from the poem of Fingal being patronized 

 by the Earl of Bute. He does not, however, produce any authority 

 to shew that the poems, " those monuments of genius," were ever 



