learned Doctor Samuel Johnson. In his Tour to the Western Isles, 

 published in 1774, he has discussed the subject of Ossian with a 

 strength of reasoning, which nothing but the clearest demonstration 

 of opposing facts can ever set aside. By a force of mental compres- 

 sion, which was eminently his own, he has condensed into a few sen- 

 tences the sum of almost all that can be adduced against the authen- 

 ticity of Macpherson's Ossian. " I believe," says he, " that the 

 poems of Ossian never existed in any other form than that in which 

 we have seen them. The editor, or author, never could shew the ori- 

 ginal, nor can it be shewn by any other. To revenge rational incre- 

 dulity by refusing evidence, is a degree of insolence with which the 

 world is not yet acquainted, and stubborn audacity is the last refuge 

 of guilt. It would be easy to shew it if he had it ; but whence could 

 it be had ? It is. too long to be remembered, and the language for- 

 merly had nothing written. He has, doubtless, inserted names that cir- 

 culated in popular stories, and may have translated some wandering 

 ballads, if any can be found; and the names and some of the images be- 

 ing recollected, make an inaccurate auditor imagine, with the help of 

 some Caledonian bigotry, that he has formerly heard the whole." 



If Macpherson had answered these weighty objections satisfac- 

 torily, he would have ended the dispute, and established his own 

 reputation. But being of the irritabih genus, or, as Hume calls him, 

 a " heteroclite mortal," one who thought, perhaps, that his genius 

 should stamp authority on his words, and set him above the critic's 

 scrutiny or suspicion, instead of vindicating his character and addu- 

 cing his proofs, he thought fit to proceed by a more summary way, 

 and threatened the critic whom he could not confute. He wrote an in- 

 solent letter to Johnson, and was answered in the following " rough 

 phrase of stern defiance :"* 



* Murphy's Essay on the Life and Genius of DoctoJi; JohnsoA. 



