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connexion of his poems with the Roman history, and the fiction of 

 his wars with Caracalla and Carausius; but maintains that conflicts be- 

 tween the Romans and Caledonians were common; though, at this dis- 

 tance of time, we cannot tell who was the hero " of the furious eye," 

 or " Caros king of ships." The word Roman, he remarks, occurs 

 not, because Ossian denominates individuals from their personal qua- 

 lities ; and countries, mountains, and rivers, by appellations deduced 

 from " the circumstances by which they are peculiarly, distin- 

 guished." r ' • ■ , • 



It was prudent at least, in Macpherson, to deal in general descrip- 

 tion, and to designate heroes, not by real names, but by such loose 

 epithets and adjuncts, that if they did not apply to one, they might 

 easily be transferred to another. The mention of Caracalla was 

 unfortunate. It shot a beam of light through the Highland mist 

 in which he wrapt himself, and exposed him to the critical shaft of 

 Gibbon. It might have excited the wonder of a less acute judge, 

 "that the son of Severus, who, in the Caledonian war, was known 

 only by the name of Antoninus, should be described in these poems 

 by a nickname invented four years afterwards, and scarcely used by 

 the Romans, till after the death of the emperor." Macpherson was 

 ignorant of this fact, or, we may rest satisfied, we should never have 

 heard of the name of Caracalla in connexion with the poems of 

 Ossian. ,,, 



But though Doctor Graham gives up Caracalla, he will not so 

 easily part with Lochlin. He observes that Laing, "with his usual 

 gratuitousness of assumption, affirms that the name was unknown till 

 the ninth century." This he endeavours to disprove by a manu- 

 script which Astle thought was written in the ninth or tenth, and 

 which appears to have been composed between the fifth and eighth ; 

 and b}' the authority of Doctor Smith, who quotes a Welsh manu- 



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