328 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. IV. 



fabricated the poems which he thus exposed to possible if not certain 

 detection, if they were merely his own workmanship. 



It is surprising to know, on the authority of Dr. Graham, that corro- 

 borative evidence came froin an unexpected quarter when the poems of 

 Ossian, in their Knghsh attire, began to be extensively read. Captain 

 Parker, who was then residing in Virginia, relates that he was well 

 acquainted with the Rev. Charles Smith, a native of the Island of Mull, 

 who settled near Norfolk in Virginia. A copy of Ossian's poems was 

 sent to Captain Parker, who carried it to Mr. Smith. After a few lines 

 from Temora had been repeated in his hearing, he remarked that he knew 

 that poem, and repeated a great part of it and explained it with an exact- 

 ness which appeared to Parker to be astonishing and scarcely credible. 

 He acted in a similar manner in connection with several of the other 

 poems. Mr. Smith asserted, that if he had been with Mr. MacPherson, he 

 could have given him some other poems of Ossian well worthy of preser- 

 vation ; that he remembered them almost from infancy ; that repeating 

 them was the amusement of the children and servants about his father's 

 house, and generally in all the West Highlands, and that still, walking or 

 riding alone, he was wont to repeat them. Mr. Smith died in 1772, and 

 was about 70 years of age at his death. The indirect testimony of Mr. 

 Smith is very valuable, seeing that he lived far away from the scenes of 

 his youth, and that his references to the customs with which he was fami- 

 liar in his earlier years go far to strengthen the argument that has weighty 

 evidence on its side, in connection with the extensive prevalence and cul- 

 tivation of Ossianic poetry in the Highlands. Sir John Sinclair, in his 

 very interesting Dissertation on the authenticity of the poems of Ossian, 

 inserts a somewhat extensive correspondence which he carried on with 

 prominent Ecclesiastics of the Church of Rome respecting a Gaelic manu- 

 script of the poems of Ossian that existed at one time at Douay in 

 Flanders. It appears that a Mr. John Farquharson, w^hen missionary in 

 Strathglass, wrote the MS. about 1745 and brought it to Douay with him, 

 where he was for a time Prefect of Studies. A Mr. MacGillivray, who 

 went to Douay College in 1763, affirmed that after the appearance of 

 MacPherson's translation, the complaint among the Gaelic scholars of 

 that College was, that it failed to do justice to the energy and beauty ot 

 the original. Mr. MacGillivray was convinced that this MS. contained 

 all the poems that were published by MacPherson ; because Mr. Farquhar- 

 son remarked frequently in his hearing, after he had read the translation 

 •of MacPherson, that he had all these poems in his own collection. The 

 testimony of another Mr. MacGillivray is to the effect, that Mr. Farqu- 

 harson first saw MacPherson's translation in 1766 or 1767 ; and that after 

 he had read it, he stated that he had all the translated poems in his 



