1892-93.] THE PRESENT ASPECT OF THE OSSIANIC CONTROVERSY. 319 



THE PRESENT ASPECT OF THE OSSIANIC 



CONTROVERSY. 



By Rev. Neil MacNish, B.D., LL.D. 



(Read April ist. iSgj.) 



James MacPherson was the translator of the poems of Ossian. He 

 might with all fairness have applied the well-known words of Horace 

 to himself, Exegi monumentuin aere perennius : so wonderful and far- 

 extending was the impression which the poems of Ossian in their English 

 dress speedily made in the literary world, and so firm is the position 

 which, after the lapse of more than a hundred years, those poems occupy 

 in the literary annals of mankind. Professor Blackie thus writes : " On 

 the 2nd day of October, 1759, Dr. Carlyle, of Inveresk, came from the 

 neighbourhood of Dumfries to Moffat and found there John Home, the 

 author of "Douglas," with whom he took up his quarters for the day. In 

 the course of conversation. Home mentioned to Carlyle that he had long 

 been on the scent for some old Gaelic poems which Professor Ferguson, 

 an Atholl man, informed him were current in the Highlands, and that he 

 had at last stumbled upon a person who could give him some definite 

 information on the subject. This was a young man, by name James 

 MacPherson, from the district of Badenoch, in the centre of the Highlands, 

 of good family and well educated, an excellent classical scholar and no 

 stranger to the Muses, and who was at that time acting as tutor to young 

 Graham of Balnagown, afterwards Lord Lynedoch. I'rom this young 

 man Home had learned, that he had in his own possession some of those 

 old poems, which Home eagerly solicited him to translate." MacPherson 

 produced, after much solicitation, an English version of the '■ Death of 

 Oscar," Bas Oscair. The poetical genius which that poem, even in its 

 English dress, displayed, gave immense pleasure to Home and. to Dr. 

 Blair, who was then in the zenith of his literary fame. A small volume 

 was subsequently published by MacPherson with the designation, "Frag- 

 pnents of Ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands of Scotland." The 

 public interest in Gaelic poetry at once became deeper and wider, insomuch 

 that the prominent patrons of literature in Scotland, Lord Elibank, Dr. 

 Robertson, Mr. John Home, Sir Adam Ferguson, Dr. Blair and others, 

 determined to send James MacPherson on what they termed a poetical 

 mission throughout the Highlands, for the purpose of collecting all the 

 Ossianic poetry that could be procured, and thus of rescuing from oblivion 

 7 



