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Apostle, * * * * the solution of your question is so much the more 

 easy. All the world will allow that the use of letters was known in 

 Ireland from Saint Patrick's time, and the sons of Erin were greatly 

 interested in the preservation of Ossian's works. Therefore it may 

 reasonably be presumed, that some one of Saint Patrick's disciples 

 would have committed to writing the compositions of that excellent 

 poet, before he himself had left the world." This is excellent, and 

 may be quite true if Ossian lived until he was near three hundred years 

 old ; for to that age he must have lived if he were cotemporary with 

 Saint Patrick. But if he did live to that age, and that his works 

 were then committed to writing, " from which numberless copies 

 might have been drawn out from age to age, * * * * and some of 

 these copies undoubtedly imported into the Highlands and Isles from 

 Ireland," as the learned Doctor asserts, what has become of all these 

 copies, that not one of them can be now produced ? If one of those 

 copies were in existence in the year 1807, when the Highland Society 

 of London published what is called " The Poems of Ossian in the 

 original Gaelic," why was not it printed instead of that silly piece of 

 forgery which in every line betrays its recent composition. But 

 enough of Doctor Macpherson's letters ; let us now take a view of 

 the letter of Mr. Angus MacNeill, (Appendix, Rep. p. 18,) to which 

 the Committee calls our attention. 



Mr. Mac Neill, in his letter to Doctor Blair, says, "I have the dis- 

 satisfaction to find, that the success of my inquiries on the subject 

 you proposed, has fallen greatly short of my expectations. 1 do not 

 remember to have seen any manuscripts, or written copies of the ori- 

 ginal of any of these poems" (Ossian's) " myself; yet the elder Clan- 

 ranald declared, that he had himself transcribed above one hundred 

 pages of a large ancient manuscript which treated of the wars of 

 Fingal and Comhal his father, which manuscript was carried over to 



