THE POEMS OF OSSIAN. 393 



Ossian, would contimie to influence others who did not choose to 

 investigate the matter for themselves. Whatever opinion may finally 

 prevail regarding the poems of Ossian, it must be confessed that great 

 injustice has been done to them, because all the flicts connected ^vith 

 their history have not been carefully examined. It seems almost 

 superfluous, at this distance of time, to refer to a subject in which, it 

 may be supj^osed, few now feel any interest. It will not, however, 

 be without some avail to examine concisely the entire controversy 

 respecting the poems of Ossian. It wUl be found that sufficient 

 evidence remains for overthrowing the objections of Johnson and 

 Laing, and for gaining some measure at least of reputation for the 

 Bard of Selma. It will be seen that the hoar of centuries lends 

 additional weight to the poems of Ossian. There are strong argu- 

 ments to show that the heroes whose names appear in these poems 

 were well known long before MacPherson's translation appeared. 

 Throughout the Highlands of Scotland, there is abundant testimony 

 in favour of the general opinion which is held in reference to the 

 Fingalians. In the names of places, in popular traditions, in the 

 corroboration which archseological researches furnish, in the venera- 

 tion which still attaches to the poems of Ossian and to the affecting 

 incidents which they describe, there is enough to justify the inference 

 that at some remote time such heroes must have lived and flourished. 

 Long before MacPherson undertook the publication of the poems 

 of Ossian, the attention of Home, Jefierson, Blair and others was 

 directed to the fact that throughout the Highlands of Scotland poems 

 of very great antiquity were in circulation. It was likewise asserted 

 that unless some means were used to put these poems into a perma- 

 nent form, they would soon be lost to the literary world. In the 

 early part of the eighteenth century, political agencies were at work 

 which greatly changed the social life of the Highlands, and threatened 

 to overtlu-ow those means whereby poems were handed down from 

 one generation to another. With the view, therefore, of preserving 

 poems which, to say the least of it, were interesting on account of the 

 language they represented, and the very remote origin to which they 

 lay claim. Home, Jefferson, Robertson and Blaii' induced James 

 MacPherson, a native of Badenoch, to undertake a journey through 

 the Highlands, in order to recover as many as possible of the poems 

 of Ossian. It was in 1760 that MacPherson, thus aided, undertook 

 to collect poems which had been handed down by oral tradition or in 



