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We have read of a lady who could repeat a considerable part of 

 Pope's Homer, and knew a scholar who committed to memory the 

 Agamemnon of ^schylus ; but does any one exist who can repeat a 

 single page of Macpherson's Ossian ? 



Those who maintain that Ossian's Poems have been preserved by 

 oral tradition, tell wonderful stories of the strength and capacity of 

 Highland memories. Sir John Sinclair informs us, that "Captain 

 John Mac-Donald declared, that when he was about twelve or fifteen 

 years of age, he could repeat from one hundred to two hundred Gae- 

 lic poems of different lengths ; that he learned them from an old man 

 about eighty years of age, who sung them for years to his father when 

 he went to bed at night, and in the spring and winter before he rose 

 in the morning." Other instances are adduced of persons who "could 

 repeat for hours on each of three successive days, many thousand lines 

 of ancient poetry, and, as appeared to Doctor Stewart, with perfect 

 correctness." 



That the Highlanders have retentive memories, and can repeat 

 long poems and tales, is not disputed. The question is, has any one 

 of them ever repeated a single poem which was the true original 

 Gaelic, from which Macpherson translated any part of his Ossian ? 

 And now that they actually do exist in Gaelic, into which we have a 

 perfect persuasion that they have been translated from the English, 

 can any Highlander repeat them .'' We believe not. — Not because 

 modern Highlanders have worse memories than their forefathers, but 

 because the modern Gaelic, into which the poems have been rendered, 

 is of a totally different structure from that of the ancient bards, and 

 wants that peculiar rhythmical cadence, which, like our own English 

 rhymes, presented such facilities to the memory. 



Had Macpherson really possessed any genuine Gaelic MSS;, and 

 understood them, he would not have left us under any doubt of their 



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