313 



published by him. It is inclined to believe that he was in use to sup- 

 ply chasms, and to give connexion by inserting passages which he 

 did not find, and to add what he conceived to be dignity and delicacy 

 to the original composition, by striking out passages, by softening 

 incidents, by refining the language ; in short, by changing what he 

 considered as too simple or too rude for a modern ear." 



The above extract, without any other authority, furnishes a suffi- 

 cient proof that the Committee of the Society was of opinion that the 

 poems pubhshed by Macpherson were manufactured by him, from 

 materials gleaned from poems, and fragments of poems; and that 

 after all its inquiries, it was " not able to obtain any one poem of the 

 same title and tenor with the poems published by him ;" consequently 

 the Committee must have believed that those poems published under 

 the name of Ossian were fabrications. Yet the Society itself, wishes 

 us to believe that the poems are genuine, and confidently refers us to 

 the language oiits originals for proofs of their authenticity. 



We have already examined, as a fair sample of the whole, some 

 lines of the " original," and we have shewn that original to be of 

 modern manufacture. If the Cento of Doctor Smith contained any 

 of the originals of passages in the poems given by Macpherson, they 

 should be the same in language and versification as the originals of 

 the Society ; yet there can be scarcely any two things more dissi- 

 milar. The Cento of Doctor Smith is certainly compiled from poems 

 , of some age, though the copies that came into his hands were modern 

 and corrupted ; but the Society's " originals " are mere modern com- 

 positions, clumsy forgeries, which any Gaelic scholar is able to 

 detect. But let us not depend upon assertion, let us compare. 



Doctor Smith begins his Cento with the commencement of the 

 poem of Fingal ; but his first three lines introductory to the poem, 



