17 



cion and leading to detection. Macpherson, with a temerity which 

 experience afterwards taught him to correct, pubhshed some hnes of 

 the original of Temora, stating, that " the words are not, after the 

 Irish manner, bristled over with unnecessary quiescent consonants so 

 disagreeable to the eye, and which rather embarrass than assist the 

 reader.'^ General Vallancey, who had studied the Gaelic with such 

 accuracy, as enabled him to publish a valuable grammar of the Irish 

 language, was forcibly struck by these extraordinary observations so 

 contrary to the experience of every Celtic scholar. The corruption 

 of the Celtic in that single specimen, consisting of only twelve lineis, 

 afforded, in his opinion, "a striking proof of the novelty of the poem, 

 or, if it be ancient, it is a proof," says he, " of the unlettered igno- 

 rance of the ancient Gaelic Scots." This he illustrates by example, 

 and adds, "if we were to criticise on every corrupt word in the twelve 

 lines, it would require many pages." Such observations from a man 

 of so much knowledge in Celtic learning as Vallancey, confirmed Shaw 

 in M'hat he says he always believed, that the specimen given by Mac- 

 pherson, was his own translation from the original English. •\- 



The well-founded opinion of Vallancey was amply corroborated 

 by the investigation of succeeding writers. In 1775 appeared "The 

 Ogygia Vindicated," a posthumous work of O'Flaherty's, published 

 by C. O'Conor, Esq. The editor, in his preface, remarks, that Mac- 

 pherson " forgot to prove how those poems could, through a series of 

 more than a thousand years, be preserved among an illiterate people ; 

 or how mere oral tradition, which taints every other human composi- 

 tion, and corrupts its stream as it flows, should prove a salt for keep- 

 ing the works of Ossiaii sweet in their primitive purity. He forgot also 

 to assign a reason how that illiterate bard should be so descriptive of 

 arts and customs unknown in his own age, and so silent of the rites 



* Shaw's Inquiry, p. 34. 

 VOL. XVI. D 



