GEORGE MUNRO. 29 



make me say things against the poor Celt I never so 

 much as thought of, merely, I suppose, that you may 

 have the pleasure of defending him. Who ever doubted 

 that the poems of Ossian were the compositions of a 

 Scotch Highlander ? Truly not I, nor any one else I 

 ever heard of, except a few Irishmen. They were written 

 by a countryman every line of them, bating the little 

 bits that were borrowed from Milton and the Bible, by 

 a genuine countryman, who though not over endowed with 

 honesty, equalled in genius any writer of his age. Ossian, 

 indeed, or Oscian, as the Irish call him, was, as you 

 know, a bog-trotter of the beautiful island, who made 

 ballads in the days of the good St Patrick, and sold 

 them for half-pence a piece ; but who can say that of 

 Mac Pherson? 



' Since you love Highlanders so well, I fain wish I 

 could introduce you to my cousin, George Munro. 

 I would not fear to match him, as a specimen of 

 what his country can produce, against your Alness 

 Highlander or any Highlanders you ever saw. He re- 

 sides with his wife and family in Stirling, and since I 

 last wrote you I have spent a day with him. Let me 

 describe him to you as he is both in mind and per- 

 son. He is a well-built robust man of five feet eight, 

 large-limbed, broad-shouldered, keen-eyed, and with re- 

 solution stamped on every feature. Nature has written 

 man on his whole appearance in her most legible hand. 

 But what I have to add will I am afraid give you a 

 lower opinion of him. No one ever regarded me as 

 particularly well built or handsome. I am, besides, fifteen 

 years younger than my cousin, and yet through one of 

 those tricks of resemblance so strangely occasioned by 

 blood, I have been repeatedly addressed as Mr Munro. 

 His mind is one of the most restless and most con- 



