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Irish originals. The manner in which Macpherson manufactured his 

 poems of Ossian is related in the Report of the Society, p. 152; and 

 this confession, however reluctantly made, coming from such a quar- 

 ter, must be received as positive evidence of modern fabrication of 

 the English translation. It is also equally applicable to the Gaelic 

 originals of Ossian, published by the Society, which, from the 

 arrangement of the poems, agreeing with the English Ossian, though 

 differing in some trifling variation of words and expressions, are evi- 

 dently translations from the English translation manufactured by 

 Macpherson : and this alone, if all other proofs were wanted, should 

 be sufficient to put an end to the controversy respecting the antiquity 

 and authenticity of those poems published by him, as the poems of 

 Ossian, and also of those Gaelic lines, we shall not call them verses, 

 published by the Highland Society as the originals of those poems. 

 But as the Highland Society has relied with confidence on the "com- 

 plete internal evidence which their original supplies of its own ori- 

 ginality," we must beg the reader's indulgence for a short time lon- 

 ger, while we examine those internal proofs of " originality," which 

 the language or the structure of those ^'verses" are disposed to fur- 

 nish. In doing this we shall not tire the reader with an examination 

 of all the originals, but confine ourselves principally to the poem of 

 Fingal, as the Society seems to think that poem, in point " of sim- 

 plicity and originality," superior to others in the. collection. — See 

 Report of the Highland Society, p. 153. -liiisJ utlT — .did 



.., Before entering on this examination it is necessary, for the better 

 understanding of the subject, to say something on the structure of 

 ancient Gaelic verse, of which there is a grfeiat variety, and all subject 

 to different rules. It is not, however, necessary that we should enter 

 into the depths of Gaelic prosody, of which the fabricators of the 

 Gaelic originals of Ossian's poems seem to have been totally igno- 



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