To fix their fame on a stable basis, he exerted all his ingenuity, and 

 produced a dissertation on their authenticity, which is eulogized by 

 Hill, his biographer, as " combining the subtilty of Aristotle with the 

 elegance of Longinus."* In this dissertation, he founds his principal 

 argument on internal evidence ; but not contented with this, he pro- 

 posed to accompany it with certain documents corroborative of his 

 reasoning, and, accordingly, wrote to Hume, in London, for his opi- 

 nion as to the nature of the evidence which he should endeavour to 

 obtain. Hume candidly replied, that he often heard the poems re- 

 jected with disdain and indignation as a palpable and most impudent 

 forgery; that he foresaw, if they were left to stand on their present 

 footing, they would soon fall into final oblivion ; that for his own part, 

 he had many particular reasons to believe the poems genuine, more 

 than it was possible for any Englishman to have, yet, he was not 

 without scruples ; that the Jtianners, notwithstanding all the art with 

 which Blair had endeavoured to varnish them, formed a strong reason 

 against them ; that the preservation of such long and such connected 

 poems, by oral tradition alone, during a course of fourteen centuries, 

 is so much out of the course of human affairs, that it requires the 

 strongest reason to make us believe it ; that the capital point should 

 be established, not that the poems are so ancient as the age of Seve- 

 rus, but that they were not forged within the five preceding years by 

 James Macpherson; that the proofs must not be arguments but tes- 

 timonies ; that the fact should be ascertained whether, as Macpher- 

 son pretended, a manuscript of great part of Fingal, did actually exist 

 in the family of Clanranald, 



With this advice of his sagacious philosophic friend, Blair seemed 

 desirous to comply. He wrote to the Highlands, and received letters, 



* Hill's Account of the Life and Writings of Hugh Blair, D. D. Edin. 1807, pp. 39-40. 



