but this expedient equally discovers the forgery, and for ever damns any 

 claims that can ever be made to originality in the " Gaelic Originals." ■ 

 We have shewn that to Irish poets the genuine originals of the 

 poems ascribed to Ossian are due ; but of the real names of those 

 poets, or of the periods in which they flourished, we are ignorant. 

 That there was an ancient poet of the name of Ossian, there can be 

 no doubt ; that he celebrated the actions of the heroes, is not impro- 

 bable ; but that he was the author of any of those poems ascribed 

 to him, would be folly to assert. The language of those poems is suf- 

 ficient to shew that they were composed long after the days of 

 Ossian, the son of Fionn ; but the mention of Saint Patrick, in 

 almost every one of them, shows that the son of Fionn could not be 

 concerned in their composition. The probability is that the oldest of 

 them is not of an earlier date than the fourteenth century. The 

 oldest poem ascribed to Ossian, that the late Rev. Doctor O'Conor 

 met with, was that in the Bodleian Library, Laud. F. 95, and Rawl. 

 487, and this was not written before the fourteenth century. The 

 oldest copy that has fallen under the observation of the writer of 

 these pages, though long and intimately acquainted with the Irish 

 manuscripts, was written in the fifteenth century. This, however, is 

 not a proof that some of them were not of an earlier origin ; but of 

 this we have no certainty. The language of the poems in the Bod- 

 leian Library, was totally unintelligible to Mr. Macpherson, as he 

 confessed to the Librarian, Mr. Price, who told it to the late Doctor 

 O'Conor. If a poem, in the language of Ossian's days, were laid 

 before the generality of modern Irish readers, it would be, most pro- 

 bably, as unintelligible to them as the poem of the fourteenth cen- 

 tury > was to Mr. Macpherson; but the language of those poems 

 ascribed to Ossian, in Irish manuscripts, is well understood by the 



