634 MR small's biographical SKETCH OF PROF. ADAM FERGUSON. 



when, among other kind instances of your friendship, you introduced me to many 

 worthy and ingenious men, and among the rest to Mr Professor Ferguson. I 

 believe you mentioned to him, that I had entertained doubts of the authenticity 

 of Ossian's Poems, to remove which, he sent for a student that was a native of 

 the Highlands, who told me he had heard lines of the original sung by the servants 

 and country people there ; and being asked if he could repeat any lines himself, 

 he recited some passages in Earse, which being then translated to me, contained 

 part of the description of Fingal's Chariot (a part of the poem of which I had 

 entertained the greatest doubt). You then desired me, in a future edition of my 

 ' Reliques of Ancient Poetry,' &c., to testify what I had heard. To this I could 

 not reasonably object, and accordingly, in my second edition, 1767, 1 related in a 

 note what had occurred. Some years after, I became acquainted with a gentle- 

 man, who is also intimately so with Mr M'Pherson ; but whose name I will 

 now never mention, because I will not expose him to the inconvenience of being 

 dragged before the public, as I have unfortunately been myself. This gentleman, 

 in the most solemn manner, assured me (as one perfectly well informed) that the 

 Poems of Ossian were almost all the productions of Mr M'Pherson's own genius ; 

 that what was really original hardly exceeded in quantity our ballad of Chevy 

 Chase. When I urged to him the transaction, at which I myself had been present, 

 he assured me I had been imposed on, and advised me to suppress the note in my 

 next edition, which accordingly I did in my third impression in 1775, silently 

 and quietly, never intending to enter at all into the controversy concerning the 

 genuineness of Ossian's Poems, of which I was so incompetent a judge from my 

 utter ignorance of the Earse language. 



" From the positive repeated testimony above mentioned, together with some 

 other observations, which I occasionally made myself, I own I began to believe 

 them to be modern, but no less brilliant, proofs of Scottish genius, equally 

 tending to do honour to the country that gave birth to their author. But 

 as I never intended to publish one word on the subject, I fondly hoped I might 

 have gone out of the world without having my name ever mentioned in the 

 controversy. 



" This, however, was unluckily not to be my fate, for Mr Shaw having called 

 on me just before he set out for the Highlands, when he assured me he would 

 inquire with the utmost impartiality into the genuineness of the poetry attributed 

 to Ossian. To him I unreservedly expressed my sentiments on that subject, 

 without concealing anything I knew or believed concerning it, not intending to 

 influence his opinion (which would have been absurd in one who knew so little 

 of the matter), but to spur his diligence to remove my objections. 



" I accordingly related the transaction at which I had been present, and the 

 positive assurances I had since received from Mr M'Pherson's friend, that I must 

 have been deceived. I also urged the suspicious circumstance of the wolf being 



I 



