and customs which prevailed in it. He may, perhaps, find it easy to 

 give such problems a solution by referring to the inspiration of the anr 

 cient poets, who could foretel the future, and explain to their hearers 

 what otherwise they could not understand. But we conceive that 

 every critical reader will give a quite different solution, and not spare 

 a moment for hesitation in pronouncing those poems mere modern 

 compositions, collected by the industry, and shaped into form by the 

 interpolations of the ingenious editor," pp. xiii. xiv. 



In the summer of 1784 Doctor Young, F. T. C. D. M. R. I. A. 

 and afterwards Bishop of Clonfert, made a tour to the Highlands of 

 Scotland, with the express view of collecting ancient Gaelic poems, 

 and ascertaining, as far as possible, from what materials Macpherson 

 had fabricated his Ossian. The result is published in the first volume 

 of the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy. He accuses Mac- 

 pherson of having altered the dates of his originals, which appear to 

 be the Irish Fenian Tales, of giving them a much higher antiquity 

 than belongs to them, of suppressing the name of Saint Patrick, and 

 altering both the form and the matter. He tells us that Mr. M' Arthur, 

 minister of Mull, in reply to some inquiries of one of the Professors 

 in the University of Glasgow, wrote to him that there were many spu- 

 rious Irish songs wandering through the country, but to satisfy his 

 scruples, he sent him four fragments extracted from the genuine 

 poems of Ossian. The first and second of these specimens of the 

 genuine Ossian, were found by Doctor Young to be extracted from an 

 Irish poem, of which there is a beautiful copy in the Library of the 

 University of Dublin, entitled Laoi Mhanuis Mhoir. The third is 

 taken from the Marbhrann Oscair ; and the fourth from the poem of 

 Oran eadar Ailte agus do Maronnan, of which also there is a copy in 

 the Dublin University. " It appears, therefore, that those spurious 

 Irish ballads, as they are called by Macpherson and M'Arthur, are 

 the very originals of which the former compiled his Ossian." 



