THE POEMS OP OSSIAN. 399 



sible manner in which Laing proceeded to account for the origin of 

 the various poems ascribed to Ossian, was calculated to do immense 

 injury to MacPherson. The reader has reason to suppose that the 

 poems bearing the name of Ossian are forgeries, and that Laing was 

 hj some means acquainted with the manner in which MacPherson 

 prepared them. Laing's reading must have been very extensive ; 

 and hence it is that with wonderful assurance he sought to account 

 for the origin of the several poems which bear the name of Ossian. 

 So unqualified are his opinions and so confident is his judgment, that 

 the reader may be pardoned for imagining that Laing himself acted 

 a prominent part in the fabrication of those poems which he ascribes 

 to MacPherson. According to him, Milton, Virgil, Pope, and the 

 Holy Scriptures furnished MacPherson with his most pleasing ideas 

 and comparisons. He must have forgotten that no poems are truer 

 to nature than the poems o^Ossian. The ideas of the poet were 

 very circumscribed indeed. Nature in her manifold phases : sun, 

 moon and stars ; the roaring streams and loud blasts of winter ; the 

 towering trees and solitary moss-covered rocks — furnished the grand- 

 est ideas which are found in the poems of Ossian. There is in them 

 an absenefe of everything that would betray any great advancement 

 in enlightenment and civilization, or any acquaintance with the 

 literature and customs of other countries. It is surely not too much 

 to expect that the many observers of nature's beauties can, irrespec- 

 tive of mutual aid, discover her most pleasing as well as her most 

 melancholy features. May it not be asked. Why could not Ossian 

 and MacPherson discover for themselves those beautiful comparisons 

 which nature ofifers to every attentive observer 1 Laing further 

 aflSrms that, because MacPherson knew nothing about the religion 

 which prevailed in. Scotland in the era he assigns to Ossian, he 

 studiously avoided every reference to the religious opinions of that 

 time. Led away by the English version of certain Gaelic words, 

 Laing sought to detect anachronisms in the writings of Ossian. 

 Tura's wall, to which allusion is made in Fingal, was in his opinion 

 open to the objection, that towers or castles were not erected in 

 Ireland for niae centuries subsequent to the date assigned by 

 MacPherson to Ossian. Laing could not have known that in Gaelic 

 no word is commoner or more ancient than tiir, the equivalent of 

 tower. It means a heap of stones, however rudely and irregularly 

 they may be arranged. With regard to the objection that no pointed 



