295 



He thinks they might be preserved uncorrupted in writing. He says 

 that the Scotch " had the use of letters from the latter end of the 

 sixth age at least,*' and that "some of the men of learning in 

 Icolmkill were capable of writing manuscripts ; " that, in these manu- 

 scripts, the works of Ossian might " be preserved, and copies of these 

 might have transmitted the genuine compositions uncorrupted from 

 one age to another, until we come down to the present generation." 

 Here the Doctor, in opposition to the opinion of Sir John Sinclair, 

 and of himself, before expressed, gives his opinion that a written 

 copy is a better preservative for ancient composition than " the total 

 ignorance of letters." But leaving the partisans of these gentlemen 

 to settle this affair in any manner they think fit ; and acknowledging 

 that the learned men of lona, or any where else in Scotland, tnight 

 make copies of the poems of Ossian, if such were extant in their day, 

 we must have proofs that they actually did so, and that either these 

 original copies, or authentic transcripts of such copies, are still in exis- 

 tence, before we can be persuaded that the "originals" of the Society 

 are not modern forgeries. We do not mean to say that these forge- 

 ries were made by the Society, but that they were either manufac- 

 tured by Macpherson himself, after he had received the Indian sub- 

 scription, or procured to be made by his executors, to save them 

 from the legal proceedings of the Society, to recover from them that 

 enormous sum of money which he had received, to pay for the ex- 

 pense of printing the originals of his Ossian ; but a line of which he 

 never put to press, though he lived several years after he had received 

 the money. 



. ; From p. 446 to 478 of the " Supplemental Observations,'' we are 

 amused by a repetition of the testimonies previously published in the 

 Report of the Highland Society, from which we have already given 

 copious quotations, accompanied by observations. We may, there- 



