275 



internal evidence of its own originality ; " but on the contrary we 

 assert, that it gives the strongest evidence of modern fabrication, as 

 we shall hereafter endeavour to prove. '^' 



At p. 12, Sir John speaks of " Manuscripts produced by Mac- 

 pherson;" but he does not tell us to whom those manuscripts were 

 produced, what were their contents, nor what has become of them. 

 Were they autographs, or were there no other copies of them ever in 

 existence ? Or did Macpherson destroy his manuscripts, which 

 might be Irish for any thing we can discover to the contrary, for the 

 purpose of making his own post originals pass for genuine .'' On this 

 subject Sir John chose to preserve a strict silence. 



Page 16, Sir John says that the Celtic tribes despised letters. 

 This cannot be strictly true, for the Irish were a Celtic tribe, and we 

 doubt very much that any writer of repute, before Sir John, has ever 

 said that the Irish despised letters. 



Sir John, eager to grasp at any thing tending in any manner to 

 shew that the ancient Caledonians wrote Gaelic poetry, tells us, in a 

 note, p. 19, that " Mr. Pinkerton, in his Enquiry into the History ofi 

 Scotland, has given us the Duan Albanach, which is supposed to 

 have been written by the Highland Court Bard of Malcolm III. be- 

 tween the years 1056 and 1093. It is a metrical list of Kings, pos- 

 sessing little poetical merit, but surely may be regarded as sufficient 

 evidence that Gaelic poetry was then written, or at least known in 

 Caledonia," No Irish scholar ever denied that Gaelic poetry was 

 known in Scotland in the eleventh century. The writer of these- 

 sheets has in his possession a document that proves it was known 

 there at a much earlier period. But this proves nothing as to the 

 antiquity or authenticity of those poems, published under the name 

 of Ossian, and upon which the two Macphersons founded their silly 

 system of Scottish history ; so that the authority of Pinkerton does • 



VOL. XVI. o o 



