152 



on the coast of Antrim, may conceive that he beholds the scenery of 

 the genuine Ossian. We recollect to have seen, many years ago, an 

 old gentleman in the County of Antrim, who fancied he had disco- 

 vered the whole topography in the neighbourhood of the Six Mile 

 TVater ; and in a recent work by Hugh Y. Campbell, Esq. R. N. 

 F. A. S., it is laid down and described as lying on the western 

 shores of the bay of Carrickfergus, and about the mountains of Carn- 

 money and Cavehill. Why has not the County of Wicklow put in 

 its claim ? Macpherson's descriptions will apply to it as well as to 

 Morven. It has mountains and valleys ; whistling heath and blue 

 streams; grey rocks and a sandy beach, with curling mists and rain- 

 bow skies. 



"In truth," says the learned author of "Dissertations on the 

 History of Ireland," " there would be no end of pointing out the 

 topographical ignorance of Ossian, in omitting as well as misplacing 

 some of the most noted places of Ireland, which must naturally come 

 within the plan of his poems ; his invention, however, is very pro- 

 lific ; and is particularly so where poetry wants it least, or is dis- 

 graced by it. Instead of Eatnhain, or Eamania, the celebrated seat 

 of the kings of Ulster, which Ossian never once mentions, we have 

 the castle of Tura, many ages before a single castle was built in the 

 kingdom : and instead of Craove-roe, the academy near Eamania, for 

 teaching the use of arms ; he gives us Muri's Hall, a name as little 

 known to all ancient writers as Tura itself. From numberless instan- 

 ces of such forgeries, omissions, and misplacings, the reader will be 

 enabled to form a proper judgment of Ossian, as well as Ossia7i^s 

 translator." 



