u 



Johnson, recovering some of the poetry of Ossian, and stripping Mr. 

 Macpherson's brow of what I then used to call them, ' stolen bays ;' for 

 I then believed there might be an original, and that he rather wished 

 to appear the author than the translator.'" He was frequently en- 

 gaged in long discourses with the blind, the lame, and the aged; "but 

 I found myself," he proceeds, "not a little mortified, when all they 

 could repeat was nothing but a few fabulous and marvellous verses 

 or stories concerning Fionn Mac-Cumhal, alias Fingal ; his Fiona or 

 followers chasing each other from island to island, striding from 

 mountain to mountain, or crossing a frith at a hop, with the help of 

 his spear. There was much of enchantments, fairies, goblins, incan- 

 tation rhymes, and the second sight. When I heard those of one 

 country I heard all, for they all repeated in general the same stories ; 

 and when I had the narration of a few, I had every thing." 



Having no success in the way of oral communication, he turned 

 his attention to the discovery of manuscripts. And here his inquiries, 

 as he expected, for he knew that the Erse was never written, proved 

 equally unsuccessful. He was told of one person who had a manu- 

 script; but that person referred him to a second, and the second 

 to a third, and the third to the first again, till having gone round the 

 circle, he was at length told that Macpherson had carried them all 

 to London. He found, indeed, in the possession of Mr. Macintyre, 

 of Glenace, Argyleshire, a parchment manuscript of Irish genealog}^, 

 written in the Irish character, dialect, and contraction. It was shewn 

 to him as containing the object of his search; but after much difficulty 

 in decyphering it, he saw that it did not contain a line of Ossian's 

 poetry. " Having made this fruitless inquiry," he continues, "after 

 the genuine Ossian's poetry, from which I only learned there never had 

 been any, I passed over to Ireland, there also to pursue Ossian, and 

 yther inquiries. I rummaged, with the consent of Doctor Leland, 



