ingly they have been gradually declining in public estimation, and 

 are regarded now only as a curious imposition, deriving an adventi- 

 tious interest from the literary controversies to which they have 

 given birth. 



The question recurs, if they were not original, is it to be supposed 

 that Macpherson could compose them ? Why not ? Why should not 

 Macpherson have as much genius as the son of Fin Mac-Cumhal ? 

 He had certainly infinitely more literary advantages. The stores of 

 Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, and English poetry, were open to him, 

 and from all of them he drew as liberally as if they were his own exclu- 

 sive property. Every page of his poems bears evidence of his industry 

 in collecting and disposing his borrowed materials. He has recast and 

 disguised them, to be sure, and intermingled them with some foreign 

 ingredients. Instead of the rude Cyclopean architecture of the an- 

 cient Celts, he has presented us with a new composite order of his 

 own construction, which deserves to be named the Macphersonian. 

 His poems have the same relation to Homer and Virgil, that a High- 

 land shieling has to the Parthenon or Colosseum. 



By a curious kind of fatality, the defenders of the authenticity of 

 Ossian, almost always furnish arguments for their own confutation. 

 Thus, after stating the impossibility of any genius of modern times 

 equalling the old Celtic bard, they tell us that the Ossianic poetical 

 temperament still prevails in the Highlands to such a degree, that 

 we should not be surprised to hear of a whole clan of Ossians. 



" Even in the Highlanders of the present day, whose characters," says Graham, " have 

 not undergone a change by the contact of foreign manners, we may still trace the mode of 

 thinking and acting which distinguishes the personages of Ossian. Accustomed to traverse 

 vast tracts of country, which have never been subjected to the hand of art ; contemplating 

 every day the most diversified scenery; surrounded every where by wild and magnificent 

 objects ; by mountains, and lakes, and forests, the mind of the Highlander is expanded, 

 and partakes in some measure of the rude sublimity of the objects with which he is conver- 



