Doctor Young was much surprised to find that out of so large a 

 work as Temora, Fingal, and all the other shorter poems, M'Arthur 

 should happen to select only such passages as occurred in the Erse 

 songs that fell into Mr, Hill's hands or his own. "This," he observes, 

 " seems to indicate, that the foundation of Macpherson's Ossian is 

 much narrower than, perhaps, we might have suspected." 



In comparing the Irish copies with the Scotch fragments, and the 

 poems published in 1786, in Gillies's Perth edition of Gaelic Poems, 

 he found that the most perverse industry had been employed to corrupt 

 and falsify the genuine Irish text, to make it accord with Macpher- 

 son's fabrications. The name of Saint Patrick, though of frequent 

 occurrence in the Irish, was carefully excluded from the Scotch 

 copies, because the era of the saint did not synchronise with that of 

 Ossian. The name of Manus was also excluded, and another substi- 

 tuted, for a similar reason ; and all such passages as represented 

 Fin and Ossian to be natives of Ireland, were carefully expunged, to 

 make room for a version favourable to the new hypothesis.* Every 

 thing was done which it was possible to effect by suppression, addi- 

 tion, and falsification, to give plausibility and currency to the grand 

 imposition. 



"Talibus insidiis perjurique arte Sinonis, 

 Credita res." 



i I 



ViRG. , 



<J 



Doctor Campbell, in his " Strictures on the Ecclesiastical and 

 Literary History of Ireland," published in 1789, follows in the same 

 strain as Doctor Young, whom he eulogizes as a writer whose "mind, 



* "Ex uno disce omnes." In the combat of CoN, son of Dargo, and Gaul, son of Morne, 

 the messenger of Fin is made to say, "For what cause have you come into Ireland?" But in 

 the Perth edition it is changed into (the Gaelic of) " For what cause have you come into this 



CODNTRY ?" 



D 2 



