187 



land." In not one of these cited places do we find the word *'Albin" 

 from which the conclusion is, it is submitted, quite plain, that Mac- 

 pherson's using it in all cases, proves that he did so for a sinister pur- 

 pose, and that he was so little acquainted with correct Gaelic lan- 

 guage, that he was not aware of the grammatical blunders that he 

 was falling into. This, it is submitted, is another positive proof that 

 those poems, published by him, under the name of Ossian, are of 

 his own manufacture, but founded on the popular tales and poems 

 of the Irish, changing, where necessary, the names of persons and 

 places to suit his own purposes. If Mr. Macpherson had seen the 

 ancient Irish manuscript in the possession of the Highland Society of 

 Scotland, of which we see a. facsimile in the Appendix to the Report 

 of the Committee of that Society, page 311, plate III. No. IV. he 

 would have seen that Alba, and not Albin, was the Gaelic name of 

 Scotland : 



" Inmain tir in tir ud thoir 

 ALBA cona hingantaibh." 



" Beloved land, that Eastern land, 

 Scotland with her wonders." 



It appears that Mr. Macpherson was not quite sure that his pla- 

 giarisms should escape detection, and to forestal the objections which 

 he foresaw might be made to the authenticity of the poems, he con- 

 fesesses (n. ed. p. 39-40, &c.) that some of his poems are founded 

 upon the same stories as some of the Irish poems. He mentions only 

 three or four, but he might have gone much farther, as we shall take 

 occasion to shew hereafter. 



" The father of Ossian," in accounting for the agreement be- 

 tween the early writers of Scottish history and the Irish historians, 

 respecting their common origin, tells us (n. ed. p. 4,) that " the in- 



VOL. XVI. ' C C 



