158 



John Sinclair, in support of Macpherson, quotes Sumh. The critic, 

 the historian, and the poet, are worthy of one another. Like the 

 lovers in their impatience to be happy, they invoke the gods , to an- 

 nihilate both space and time. They synchronize names and ages that 

 were separated by an interval of five or six centuries, and the Irish 

 and Danish histories are equally falsified !* 



* Since the foregoing paragraph was written, we have consulted the Modern Universal 

 History, and found that Gram, fifth king of Denmark, reigned ante Christum, 888, so that 

 an interval of not less than eleven hundred years occurred between his days and those of Fin 

 Mac-Cumhal I The Viceroy of Gothland in Gram's days was named Swarim, not Swaran. 

 Whether Macpherson took his name Swaran from Danish history, or, as we have conjectured, 

 from Sturan in the Irish poem, let the reader decide. It is of no importance. " Gram dis- 

 covering that Swarim was conspiring against his life, in order to raise himself to the throne of 

 Sweden, challenged him to single combat, and slew him." — Mod. Un. Hist. vol. xxviii. 

 p. 370. 



"In the preface to Macpherson's translation of Fragments of Ancient Poetry, the Garve of 

 his text is called Swarthan, which he afterwards changed to Swaran, as he did Cuchulaid to 

 Cuthullin." — High. Soc. Rep. App. p. 190, note. 



" His account of Swaran, king of Lochlyn's invasion of Ireland, in the tliird century, is 

 of a piece with his other assertions ; when it is a fact indisputable, that the Scandinavians, 

 who obtained the name of Locklyns, made no incursions into Britain and Ireland until the 

 eighth century, not long after the time that their intercourse with the Saxons made them 

 expert navigators. He, however, who could assert proleptically, that hereditary right was 

 established lineally among the ancient Scottish monarchs, and that minor kings conducted 

 their administration by guardians, could as readily furnish Swaran in the third century, with 

 floating castles spreading their wings of canvas, and threatening destruction to remote na- 

 tions." — O'Conor's Dissertation. 



The author who has been just quoted farther observes, that " the poems of Fingal and 

 Temora, are evidently founded on the romances and vulgar stories of the Tan-Bo-Cualgney 

 war and those of Fiana Ereann. The poet, whoever he was, picked up many of the names of 

 men and places to be found in those tales, and invention made up the rest. In digesting 

 these poems into the present forms, chronology was overlooked, and the actors of different 

 ages are all made coevals. The Tan-Bo-Cualgney war, wherein Cvchullin, Terdia, Conall- 

 Cearnach, Fergus Mac-Roy, Sfc, signalized themselves, was carried on some few years before 

 the commencement of the Christian era. Fionn Mac-Cumhaill and the Fiana Ereann flou- 

 rished in the third century. Mr. Macpherson or Ossian makes them contemporaries." 



