33 



HACPHERSON, JAMES. 



MACPHERSON, JAMES. 



34 



versatile mind and pen to Indian affairs, upon which he also produced 

 a succession of publications of temporary interest. This post brought 

 him into parliament in 1780 as member for Camelford, for which he 

 sat till 1790; he then retired to a considerable property which he bad 

 purchased jn his native county of Inverness, where he died, February 

 17th, 1796. His body was brought back to England for interment in 

 Westminster Abbey. 



We now proceed to state as briefly aa we can the controversy 

 respecting the epics known as the POEMS of OSSIAN, the publication of 

 which has already been mentioned. Macpherson affirmed that they 

 were translations made by himself from ancient Erse manuscripts which 

 he had collected in the Highlands of Scotland, and which were the 

 genuine compositions of Ossian, a Highland poet, who lived about the 

 middle of the 3rd century, and whose poetical works had been trans- 

 mitted orally from bard to bard, and from age to age, till the intro- 

 duction of the art of writing into the Highlands afforded the means 

 of fixing them in those manuscripts from which the translations 

 were made. 



The truth of this statement was denied by Dr. Johnson, who boldly 

 pronounced the whole of the poems ascribed to Ossian to be forgeries, 

 and defied Macpherson to produce a manuscript of any Erse poem of 

 earlier date than the 16th century. Hume, Gibbon, and others, 

 though they did not express so decided an opinion, seemed to more 

 than doubt their authenticity. On the other side, Dr. Blair defended 

 them in an elaborate ' Critical Dissertation ; ' Dr. Henry, in his 

 ' History of Great Britain,' founded many of his statements relating 

 to the early condition and manners of the inhabitants, of the northern 

 part of the island especially, upon their authority; Lord Kames, in 

 his ' Sketches of Man,' appealed to them as substantiating bis theories ; 

 Cesarotti annexed to his Italian translation, which improved their 

 beauties and softened their defects, a dissertation in which he speaks 

 of Oesian as equal if not superior to Homer ; Arthur Young lent his 

 aid on the same side ; and the whole body of the Highlanders seemed 

 ready to do battle in the cause of the Gaelic bard. 



In the year 1SOO, Malcolm Laing added to the second volume of 

 the first edition of his ' History of Scotland ' a dissertation in which 

 he endeavoured to establish, from historical and internal evidence, 

 that the ' Poems of Ossian ' were, without a single exception, entirely 

 spurious. 



The Highland Society of Edinburgh, in 1797, appointed a Com- 

 mittee to inquire iuto the authenticity of the ' Poems of Ossian.' A 

 list of queries was sent to every person who was likely to afford 

 information on the subject, ancient Erse and Irish manuscripts were 

 assiduously sought after, and all the traditions existing in the High- 

 lands which had any relation to the subjects of the poems were care- 

 fully collected. In 1805, when the Committee had completed their 

 labours, they published their Report, with the name of Henry 

 Mackenzie annexed to it aa their chairman. The Report states, that 

 " the Committee had not been able to obtain any one poem the same 

 in title and tenor with the ' Poems of Ossian.' " About the same 

 time was published a splendid edition of the ' Poems of Ossian, &&, 

 containing the Poetical Works of James Macpherson, Esq., in Prose 

 and Rhyme; with Notes and Illustrations by Malcolm Laing.' The 

 object of these notes and illustrations was to destroy the authority 

 and depreciate the value of the text. 



The research, the acuteness, and the close reasoning of Laing, both 

 in bin dissertation and in the notes to bis edition of the poems, 

 together with the admissions made in the Report of the Highland 

 Society, appeared to have nearly decided the question against Mac- 

 pherson. The controversy however, as far at least as relates to the 

 historical authority of the poems, can hardly be said to be terminated. 

 As late as 1837, in 'The Highlanders of Scotland, their Origin, 

 History, and Antiquities,' by F. Skene, a work published at the request 

 of the Highland Society of London, we are informed, that "by a fate 

 altogether singular in the case of the Highlanders, a complete body 

 of these ancient versified histories have been handed down in the 

 ' Poems of Otsian ' " (vol. i., p. 206) ; and that " the value of Ossian, 

 as nn historical poet, must stand iu the highest rank, while, whether 

 the chief yart of these poems are of ancient or of modern compo- 

 sition, there can remain little doubt that in him we possess the oldest 

 record of the history of a very remote ago" (vol. i., p. '215); and 

 similar sentiments still occasionally gain publicity. We proceed 

 therefore to offer, first, what appear to us to be the most important 

 facts and arguments which bear upon their authenticity, and, secondly, 

 our own estimate of their poetical value. 



Of the languages spoken by the Gaelic nations who inhabited the 

 western parts of Europe in the time of Julius Csesar, the Irish is 

 probably that which has suffered least by mixture with others. The 

 Erse, spoken in the Highlands of Scotland, approximates so closely 

 to the Irish, that it may be considered rather as a dialect of it than 

 a distinct language. But while the Irish has been a written language 

 from an era probaMy anterior to the Christian, with an ancient 

 alphabet, and a series, not only of bards, but of historical annalists, 

 of whose works there are manuscripts still extant of as early a date 

 as the 9th century, there is no evidence that the Erse was ever written 

 previous to the 15th or 16th century. If then these poems were 

 composed by Ossian, in Erse, at the end of the 4th century, they 

 mut have been preserved by tradition for 1300 or 1400 years. The 



BIOO. niv. VOL. iv. 



Irish, with all the advantage of writing to fix it, has suffered so much 

 alteration, that the oldest manuscripts are understood with difficulty 

 even by those who are most learned in the language, and some are 

 quite unintelligible. We have therefore a right to infer that the 

 Erse, unwritten, and spoken by a people at least as rude as the Irish, 

 has undergone a similar change ; and that these poems, if preserved 

 iu the words in which they wore composed by their supposed author, 

 could not be understood by the present race of Highlanders. 



Macpheraon published the Erse of the seventh book of ' Temora,' 

 but it was printed from a copy in his own handwriting, and the 

 original has never been produced. ,f Macpheraon of Strathmashie, a 

 poet who assisted, as he affirms, in transcribing the poems from old 

 manuscripts or from oral tradition, said that one of theso old manu- 

 scripts was dated in 1410; and Lord Kames, in his 'Sketches of 

 Man,' asserts, that the first four books of 'Fingal' were obtained 

 from a Gaelic manuscript, written on vellum in 1403, and found by 

 the translator in the Isle of Skye. No doubt Macpherson told him 

 so, but he does not say that he saw the manuscript, nor has it ever 

 been produced. Indeed the oldest Scotch manuscript extant, a copy 

 of Winton's Chronicle, in the Royal Library, Edinburgh, is not of an 

 earlier date than 1420. As to the Erse manuscripts, frequent appeals 

 were made by Macphersou's friends to the * Red Book ' of the bard 

 of the Clanronald family, which was in Macpherson's possession, and 

 was said to contain " some of the poems which are now translated 

 and published." It was obtained from him, but not till ho was 

 actually threatened with a prosecution by the Clanronald family, and 

 was found to be a small 12mo of 150 leaves, written in the Irish 

 character, and dated September 8, 1726, in the midst of the songs. 

 It was found to contain only one poem which had any relation to 

 Ossian, a short ballad on the longevity of the Fians. Another appeal 

 was made to "a large folio manuscript" called the 'Red Rhymer," 

 which was stated to have been given " by Mr. Macdonald of Gleneal- 

 ladel in Muideart, to Mr. Macdonald of Kyles in Cnoideart, who gave 

 it to Mr. Macpherson. It contains a variety of subjects, such as some 

 of Ossian's poems, Highland Tales, &c. Laing applied to Mr. 

 Mackenzie, the gentleman to whom Macpherson bequeathed his 

 manuscripts, and the publication of his Erse ' Ossian ' (mentioned 

 below), for the production of this manuscript. We give the result 

 of this application in Laing's own words : " In consequence of this 

 requisition, nineteen manuscript volumes, in quarto and octavo, were 

 transmitted to Edinburgh ; but the ' Red Rhymer ' in folio, the only 

 remaining manuscript ever specified or appealed to for the originals 

 of Ossian, was not produced. The manuscripts consisted of medical 

 and religious treatises, Irish legends and legendary histories, an 

 obituary, a vocabulary, genealogies, &c., with many of the Irish 

 ballads ascribed to Ossian, but not a single original, as far as could 

 be discovered, of Macpherson's pretended translation of Ossian." 



A subscription of WOOL was raised by Macpherson's countrymen 

 in the East Indies to defray the expense of publishing the supposed 

 Erse originals. It was placed in Macphersou's hands, and he retained 

 it till his death, when he left it to be applied to the purpose for 

 which it was raised. In 1807 appeared ' The Poems of Ossian, in the 

 original Gaelic, 4c. ; with Notes and Observations, by John M 'Arthur,' 

 London, 3 vols. 8vo. This edition was accompanied by a literal Latin 

 translation, by Robert Macpherson, and preceded by a dissertation on 

 the authenticity of the poems by Sir John Sinclair. Still there were 

 no ancient manuscripts ; the ' original Gaelic ' was printed entirely 

 from Macpherson's hand-writing, and corresponded literally with the 

 English, which, there is no doubt, was translated into Gaelic by 

 Macpherson himself. He had abundance of time for this task before 

 he died, and is known to have been well-qualified for it, Erse, not 

 English, being bis native language. 



The truth is, that not a manuscript, nor a fragment of a manu- 

 script, of any ancient poem, Erse or Irish, which Macpherson has 

 translated in his ' Ossian,' has ever been discovered. Ballads indeed 

 there are, some in Erse, but many more in Irish, iu which the Ossianic 

 heroes are celebrated; there is a large manuscript collection of them 

 iu the Dublin University Library, several of which were published by 

 Miss Brooke in 1789 with an English poetical version ; and there are 

 traditions, not only in Ireland, but also in Scotland, especially in 

 Argyleshire and other districts of the West Highlands, relating to 

 Fiugal, Ossian, 4c. Some of these ballads and traditions have supplied 

 circumstances, or names, or incidental allusions, which have been 

 worked up into the Ossianic collection ; so that the Highland reader 

 was continually reminded of something which was familiar to his 

 imagination, and having found parts which he thought he knew, was 

 ready to claim the whole. These materials have been carefully com- 

 pared, both by Laing and the Highland Society, with the poems, 

 and the use which has been made of them in each instance specifically 

 pointed out. 



According to 'Ossian's Poems,' Fingal was king of Morven, which 

 may be supposed to represent Argyleshire nnd the adjoining parts of 

 the West Highlands ; here he had his palace of Selma (a name never 

 heard of before the publication of 'Ossiau's Poems'), and here his 

 father Comhal, his grandfather Trathal, and his great-grandfather 

 Trenmor reigned. Ossian was the son of Fingal, and Oscar the son of 

 Ossian. For this kingdom and its kings there is absolutely no founda- 

 tion in the annals of the Highlands or of the Highland clans ; in some 



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