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that Irish writers had claimed those poems as exclusively belonging to 

 their nation ; that they denied the authenticity of the poems pub- 

 lished under the name of Ossian by Mr. Macpherson ; and that they 

 accused him of plagiarism, forgery, and imposture. All this, one 

 would think should be sufficient to induce the Committee to distribute 

 some of its circulars in Ireland, to collect information on both sides, 

 and by so doing, prove the impartiality of the Report about to be 

 formed. But no such thing was done. Not one of the circulars 

 containing the above questions was ever sent to Ireland. Why this 

 happened we shall not now stop to inquire, but leave the fact to be 

 cleared up by the Committee. 



The Report of the Committee drawn up from the answers giveft to 

 these queries, seems to have been quite satisfactory to the Highland 

 Society of London, as it has, in a " Dissertation on the Authenticity 

 of the Poems of Ossian," prefixed to the first vol. of the Gaelic Origi- 

 nals of those poems, declared that the proofs collected therein cannot 

 fail to be sufficiently satisfactory. But however satisfactory the 

 Report may have been to the sister societies, it was not quite so to the 

 public ; the controversy has continued ; the authenticity of the poems 

 of Ossian, as published by Mr. Macpherson, is denied; and what is 

 of more importance to the societies, the report of one society is de- 

 clared delusive, and the work published by the other, under the 

 title of " The Poems of Ossian in the original Gaelic," is 

 pronounced, by good Gaelic scholars, to be a bad translation of 

 Macpherson's original English, into a corrupt dialect of the modern 

 Erse. 



To bring this disputed question to an issue, the Royal Irish 

 Academy, in the true spirit of its institute, has in the terms prefixed 

 to these sheets, offered a premium for the best Essay on the subject. 

 In pursuance of that object, the following pages are composed, in 

 which weahall enter into an examination of Mr. Macpherson's state- 



