335 



generality of Irish readers, and we may, therefore, conclude, that 

 they are not of an earlier date than the fourteenth, or, perhaps, the 

 fifteenth century. 



The result of our inquiries, and we have pursued them with no 

 small assiduity, leads us again to repeat our firm conviction, and 

 we trust that we have produced sufBcient evidence to convince every 

 impartial reader of the following facts. First, That the poems of 

 Ossian, as published by Macpherson, are mere modern compositions; 

 that the plots of the larger poems, most of their episodes, and many 

 of their most remarkable incidents, are stolen from Irish poems and 

 tales ; and consequently that those Gaelic lines, published by the 

 Highland Society of London, as the " Poems of Ossian, in the origi- 

 nal Gaelic," are translations from Mr. Macpherson's English Ossian, 

 made within the last sixty years. Secondly, That there was a cele- 

 brated poet of the name of Ossian, not a Scotch, but an Irishman, 

 who lived at a period different from that assigned to him by Mr. 

 Macpherson, and who was not the author of those Gaelic poems that 

 pass under his name, and from which Mr. Macpherson stole the best 

 of his poems. Thirdly, That those old poems attributed to Ossian 

 were composed by Irishmen, to whom the chief merit of Mr. Mac- 

 pherson's Ossian is justly due ; and Lastly, That the time at which 

 those Irish poems were written is uncertain ; the oldest copies of 

 them now extant, not being of a more remote date than the thir- 

 teenth and fourteenth centuries, and some of them much nearer to 

 our times. 



We can scarcely believe that these facts will ever be contro- 

 verted ; but if they should be opposed by plausible argument, con- 

 trived by the ingenuity of the advocates for the authenticity and 

 antiquity of Mr. Macpherson's Ossian, we would beg to remind 



