setting forth what the writers, chiefly clergymen, knew of the matter.* 

 He pubhshed the result in an appendix to the dissertation, but the ori*I 

 ginal still remained in obscurity. He ascertained no fact, and found 

 no document sufficient to answer the demands, or satisfy the doubts of 

 such sceptics as Hume. . 



Macpherson soon found that he would not be suffered to sit down 

 unmolested under the shade of his laurels. Notwithstanding the po- 

 pular feeling and national partiality in favour of his work, many began 

 to entertain the same scruples as Hume. All wondered how poems 

 of such length could have been preserved by oral tradition in a rude 

 country, and through a long series of dark and barbarous ages. A 

 consideration of the changes to which all languages are subject? 

 even when bound by the strictest chains of syntax and orthography, 

 naturally created a suspicion that " the whole truth" had not 

 been divulged. Morover, the manners which they described 

 were so contrary to men's previous ideas on the subject, and they 

 presented a state of society so different from that of the heroic 

 ages of every other country, that they corroborated such suspi- 

 cions. Notwithstanding the varnish of Blair, and the patriotic in- 

 dustry of Lord Kaims, to prove that " the manners were Caledonian, 

 and not pure fiction," doubts rose upon doubts. The timid whisper 

 swelled into bold vociferation ; and the dread sounds of forgery and 

 imposition were reverberated from the metropolis of England to the 

 mountains of Caledonia. The luminous shafts of criticism flew thick 

 and fast through the poetic mists of Fingal and Temora. The ghosts 

 of Morven were heard to shriek in their airy halls, and the spirit of 

 Loda trembled in fear of utter dissolution. 



^o' Foremost in the van of Macpherson's opponents, stood the 



• : :vjii,<jil'jii male . ; 



.«OHmtel«*.oaF-}. * Highland Report. .,^^ ^^^,^,^ ^ _ 



