246 



The Report of the Committee next directs our attention to the 

 answers and observations of Captain Morison, but with as httle advan- 

 tage to the inquiry as the preceding. The captain merely says, that he 

 remembers to have heard repeated poems respecting Fingal, Ossian, 

 and other heroes ; and that " he remembers some fragments of GaeUc 

 poetry respecting those persons, and gives a few of those as he now 

 recollects them." The Committee has not favoured the pubhc with a 

 sight of the fragments, from which we may be allowed to conclude, 

 that they do not serve the design of the Committee's labours. 



Among the reminiscences of the venerable old soldier, there is 

 one which, it appears, he thought a matter of some consequence, 

 namely, " That the address to the sun in the poem of Carthon, 

 wanted two lines in the original, which neither Mr. Macpherson, nor 

 any body else, could supply, nay, supply any thing like them." It 

 would be satisfactory if the Captain had imformed us what idea he 

 formed of those two runaway lines, that enabled him to assert, so 

 positively, that " neither Mr. Macpherson, nor, any body else, could 

 supply any thing like them." ? .'■' . 



The Committee, (Report, p. 47,) speaks of the Irish poems, pub- 

 lished by Miss Brooke, and tells us they are of the same name, and 

 have several passages nearly coincident with those in a collection 

 made by Mc. Duncan Kennedy. The Report, however, asserts that 

 the copies of the Fingalian poems brought from Ireland are evidently 

 corrupted, and of a more modern style of composition than poems of 

 similar titles collected in the Highlands. A comparison of some of 

 the poems of Miss Brooke's and Mr. Kennedy's collections, is given 

 in the Appendix, p. 320, and the preference of course given to the 

 latter. We, however, are confident that the impartial Gaelic scholar, 

 who is qualified to judge, must pronounce the Highland copies to be 

 more corrupted than those of Ireland, though both are evidently 



