It 



Trinity College library, examined manuscripts, had different persons 

 who understood the character and language, in pay, conversed with 

 all who might know any thing of the matter; and, after all, could dis- 

 cover no such poetry as Macpherson's ; but that the Irish had been 

 more careful than the Highlanders, and had committed to writing 

 even those compositions of the ffteenth cenlurxj!^ 



An attack so bold and vigorous as Shaw's, if not repelled, must 

 have proved decisive. The honour of Scotland was in jeopardy, and a 

 champion arose in its defence. This was Mr. John Clarke, anonymous 

 editor of "The Works of the Caledonian Bards," published in 1778, 

 containing various epic, elegiac, and pastoral compositions of other 

 Highland bards, different from those of Ossian. We learn from the Abbe 

 Cesarotti, that he was a young Highlander of genius and understand- 

 ing, and thoroughly acquainted with the Gaelic, which was his verna- 

 cular tongue. The poems which he published, though ancient, were 

 far inferior, he acknowledged, to those of Macpherson. For the 

 authenticity of these he strenuously contended, and wrote against 

 Shaw in a spirit of acrimonious invective ; I'epresenting him as " un- 

 principled, selfish, revengeful, ungrateful towards his best friends, a 

 flatterer of Johnson ; and above all, an impostor and bare-faced slan- 

 derer, who was at perpetual contradiction with himself and truth."* 

 As Shaw, when he put forth his first publication, entitled "An Ana- 

 lysis of the Gaelic language," had been a strenuous defender of the 

 authenticity of Ossian, Clarke makes a dexterous use of the arguments 

 employed in that work; and in a part of his answer, called "Shaw 

 against Shaw," convicts him of inconsistency, and thus endeavours to 

 neutralize his conclusions. Such inconsistency, however, as may be 

 fairly contended, was only a proof of Shaw's candour. In giving up 



• Cesarotti's Dissertation, published with Ossian's Poems, in the original Gaelic, by Sir 

 John Sinclair, Bart. vol. iii. p. 317. 



