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favourable to the reception of the poems ; inquiries after the remains 

 of ancient Uterature had become fashionable, and the public found 

 itself astonished at the discovery of a new store of poetry and history, 

 which, for so long a period, had been suffered to remain unexplored 

 in the Highlands of Scotland. 



The new system of history which the preface and the notes to the 

 poems attempted to establish, was flattering to Caledonian vanity, 

 and several of the gentry of the Scotch nation, being great favourites 

 at court, procured for the work praises from those who wished to 

 make themselves agreeable to persons in authority. The poems con- 

 tained in themselves some very attractive powers ; with a great num- 

 ber of faults, they certainly possess some very great beauties, and this, 

 united to patronage and fashion, brought the poems into very general 

 notice, and procured for both the author and translator unbounded 

 commendation. 



The translator was not, however, long suffered to remain in quiet 

 possession of the applauses he received, nor was Scotland long to 

 enjoy, undisputed, the credit of giving birth to so great a genius and 

 so eminent a poet as Ossian, the son of a Caledonian monarch, and 

 himself an illustrious hero. Some of the native Highlanders, who 

 were acquainted with their native language, and who had been 

 accustomed to hear the popular tales and poetry of their ancestors, 

 could not recognize in the Ossian of Macpherson the poems they had 

 always heard as the production of the ancient Ossian, and which were 

 common to them and to the Irish ; and though something of a simi- 

 larity in the stories of both was admitted, insinuations were thrown 

 out that Mr. Macpherson was, in reality, the fabricator, and not the 

 translator of those poems. Some of the Irish writers, on the other 

 hand, boldly claimed the exclusive right to Ossian. They did not 

 deny that Macpherson was a translator, but they insisted on the 



