or Oisin, a traditional poet of great celebrity, whose compositions in the Celtic language were for centuries popularly recited in Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland. It was only at a comparatively recent period that the literary world became aware of the existence, or at least the fame, of this Celtic Homer, and by many he is still regarded as a mythical personage. In the year 1759 John Home, the Scottish dramatic poet, passed part of the summer at the pleasant little watering-place of Moffat, in the south of Scotland; and in his walks, or at the bowling-green there, he became acquainted with another visitor at the spa—James Macpherson, a young intelligent Highlander, then in his twenty-first year. Having completed his education at the university of Aberdeen, and taught a school for a short time at his native place—Ruthven in Badenoch,—Macpherson was engaged as tutor to Mr Graham, younger of Balgowan (afterwards Lord Lynedoch), who was then residing at the house of his relative, Lord Hopetown. Always enthusiastic about poetry and the Highlands, Mr Home made inquiries of Macpherson relative to the reported traditional poems of the old Celtic bards, of which he had heard some account from his friend Adam Ferguson, and a specimen of which had appeared in the Scots Magazine for 1756. Macpherson confirmed the statements as to the existence of a large amount of ancient Celtic poetry in the Highlands which had been preserved by oral transmission from one generation to another. He produced translations of two pieces, and Home was much struck with the wild beauty and originality of the poetry. On his return to Edinburgh he submitted the translations to Dr Hugh Blair and other friends, by all of whom they were greatly admired. Copies also found their way to England, and Gray the poet was, he says, "so ecstatic with their infinite beauty," that he wrote to Scotland making a thousand inquiries. Blair sought out the translator, and urged him to proceed in rendering versions of all the poems in his possession. Macpherson was reluctant to undertake the task, but at length he complied with the request; and Dr Blair having obtained a sufficient number of pieces to form a small volume, published them in 1760, under the title of Fragments of Ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands of Scotland, and translated from the Gaelic or Erse language. To this work Blair prefixed a preface embodying the information communicated to him by Macpherson, and stating that many more remains of ancient genius, and especially one work of considerable length, "deserving to be styled an heroic poem," relating the expulsion of the Danes by Fingal, might still be found in the Highlands. A subscription was entered into to enable Macpherson to make a tour for the purpose of collecting these precious remains. Lord Elginbank, Dr Robertson, John Home, Adam Ferguson, and other persons of rank and taste in Edinburgh, subscribed sums; and Horace Walpole tells us he was also a contributor.

Under the patronage of these eminent individuals, Macpherson performed his literary tour in 1760, transmitting from time to time accounts of his progress, and of the various poems which, as he said, he had succeeded in collecting. The districts through which he travelled were chiefly the north-western parts of Inverness-shire, the Isle of Skye, and some of the adjoining islands; places which, from their remoteness, and the state of manners that then existed in them, were thought the most likely to afford, in a pure and genuine form, those traditional tales and poems in the recital of which the Highlanders were represented as taking so much delight. On his return from the north, Macpherson passed some time with an early acquaintance of his own, Mr Gallie, then a missionary in Badenoch, and availed himself of the assistance of this gentleman, as well as that of Mr Macpherson of Strathmashie, in collating the different copies of the poems which he had collected, in translating difficult passages, and in determining the meaning of obsolete words. He then proceeded to Edinburgh, where he communicated to his patrons the result of his expedition; and in 1762 published Fingal, an epic poem in six books, with some other detached pieces of a similar kind. In an advertisement prefixed to Fingal, he states, that some men of genius had advised him to print the originals by subscription, rather than deposit them in a public library; and, in the preliminary dissertation he says, that "his translation is literal, and that, as he claims no merit on account of his version, he wishes that the imperfect semblance which he draws may not prejudice the world against an original which contains what is beautiful in simplicity, or grand in the sublime." In the year 1765, he published another epic poem, entitled Temora, to the seventh book of which he annexed the original Gaelic; but of all the rest he published only translations.

Macpherson had now not only enlarged his plan, but had altered the chronology of the poems. In the preface to the Fragments he had instructed Blair to represent them as probably coeval with the infancy of Christianity in Scotland; in one piece a Culdee or monk held a dialogue with Ossian, and this seemed to fix the date as not earlier than the sixth century. In his epic of Fingal, however, Macpherson boldly placed his Celtic bard in the end of the second or the beginning of the third century. Several incidents in the poem pointed out this era, particularly the engagement of Fingal (the son of Ossian) with Caracul, described by the translator as the same with the son of Severus, the Caracalla of Roman history. Fingal, who commanded the Caledonians at that memorable juncture, is said to have eluded the power of Severus, and gained a signal victory on the banks of the Carron, in which Caracul fled from his arms "along the fields of his pride." Here, then, was a startling fact—a text for controversy; could the remote Highlands be in such a state of civilization and refinement at the time of Severus? The parallel, as Gibbon said, "was little to the advantage of the Romans, if we compare the unrelenting revenge of Severus with the generous clemency of Fingal; the timid and brutal cruelty of Caracalla, with the bravery, the tenderness, the elegant genius of Ossian; or the mercenary chiefs who, from motives of fear or interest, served under the imperial standard, with the free-born warriors who started to arms at the voice of the king of Morven?" This eloquent eulogium would be well merited if we could "indulge the pleasing supposition that Fingal fought and Ossian sang" in the reign of Severus. But Gibbon himself offers one objection which destroys the hypothesis. The name of Caracalla was a nickname given to the son of Severus in derision. His real name was Bassianus, but he adopted the honoured name of Antoninus. In the Caledonian war he was known only by the appellation of Antoninus; and it was in the highest degree improbable that a Highland bard, even gifted with the second sight, should describe him by a nickname invented four years afterwards, scarcely used by the Romans till the death of that emperor, and seldom employed by the most ancient historians. This false step in his chronology strikes at the root of the translator's claim of great antiquity. David Hume took a more popular objection, which Johnson afterwards urged with great force. Is it possible that above 20,000 verses, along with numberless historical facts, could have been preserved by memory and tradition during fifty generations by the most turbulent and unsettled of all the European nations? No one, we think, will answer unreservedly in the affirmative. But Macpherson had the aid of at least some ancient manuscripts; and we must remember that it was the duty of the Celtic senachies or bards to recite poetry of this description, while it was the favourite amusement of the people during the long winter nights to listen to such recitations. National vanity, old associations, a love of song, and the habits and circumstances of the Highland people, all combined to perpetuate this traditional literature. It is undoubted that the tradition of a great hero or chief called Fion, Fion na Gael, or, as it is modernized, Fingal, existed in Ireland and in the Highlands, and that certain ballads... containing the exploits of this chief and his brother warriors were the favourite lore of the peasantry. Ossian, or blind Ossian, was as familiar, we are informed, as strong Samson or wise Solomon. The ancient Scottish poets, Barbour, Dunbar, and Gavin Douglas, had alluded to the exploits of Fingal; and in 1567 Bishop Carswell printed Knox's Forms of Prayer and Catechism translated into Gaelic—the first book printed in that language—to counteract, he says, "the lying worldly histories concerning warriors and champions and Fingal, the son of Combal, with his heroes." Abundant evidence then existed as to the popular belief in those ancient Celtic chiefs, the actors in Macpherson's epic poem; and the next point was to ascertain the precise nature of the Ossianic poetry which the Highlanders used to repeat and admire, and which Macpherson had professed to translate. The translator himself would render no assistance in solving the difficulty. At first he represented his translation as literal; and in his dissertation, published in 1762, he says, that "the translator, as he claims no merit from his version, wishes that the imperfect semblance which he draws may not prejudice the world against an original which contains what is beautiful in simplicity, or grand in the sublime." But, afterwards, when the success of his translation had been ascertained, he began to hold very different language; and, notwithstanding the strong and pointed assertions of their originality which he had advanced in his prefaces and dissertations prefixed to the earlier editions of these poems, he allowed expressions to escape him which unequivocally indicated an intention of appropriating the authorship to himself. In one passage he says that those who have doubted his veracity have paid a compliment to his genius, and that even were the allegation true, his self-denial might have atoned for his fault. "I can assure my antagonists," he adds, "that I should not translate what I could not imitate;" and again, in a similar vein, he says that "the translator who cannot equal his original is incapable of expressing its beauties." As his confidence increased, he became still more explicit, and in one of his prefaces we meet with the following passage—

"Without increasing his genius, the author may have improved his language in the eleven years that the poems have been before the public. Errors in diction may have been committed at twenty-four which the experience of a ripe age may remove, and some exuberances of imagery may be restrained with advantage by a degree of judgment acquired in the progress of time. In a convenient indifference to literary fame, the author hears praise without being elevated, and ribaldry without being depressed. The writer's first intention was to have published in verse; and as the making of poetry may be learned by industry, he had served his apprenticeship, though in secret, to the Muses." His service had been more secret than he at one time desired, for in 1758 Macpherson had published a poem, The Highlander, which was utterly worthless, and instantly sunk into oblivion. The imagery and description, however, have something of the Ossianic vein, though at times reduced to the lowest point of tenuity, or swelling into outrageous fustian. Some still earlier pieces by Macpherson, published in the Scots Magazine, are feeble paraphrases of passages in Pope and other poets. The controversy as to the genuineness of the Ossianic poems was carried on with much keenness and asperity. Johnson, in his celebrated Journey to the Western Islands (1774), had declared his conviction that the poems never existed in any other form than that in which they were published by Macpherson; and that there could not be recovered in the whole Erse language 500 lines of which there was any evidence to prove them a hundred years old! Macpherson replied by sending Johnson a challenge; a proceeding ludicrously absurd and in every sense impertinent, and which Johnson properly met by that memorable short letter of defiance in which he said he should never "be deterred from detecting what he thought a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian;" and that "what he had heard of the morals of his opponent inclined him to pay regard, not to what he should say, but to what he should prove." This was sufficient for Macpherson; but Dr Blair felt that his credit was at stake. He had written a dissertation to prove the genuineness of the translated poems, and procured testimonies from a number of clergymen and gentlemen in the Highlands in support of his theory. Still no conclusive ancient document or direct incontrovertible evidence was brought forward, and the case was rendered still more desperate by a dissertation from Mr Malcom Laing, who reviewed the whole subject—the Roman history of Britain, the middle ages, tradition, the customs and manners of the times, the real origin of the poems, imitations of the ancient and modern poets, the pretended originals, and Macpherson's indirect avowal of the whole imposture—pronouncing emphatically against the translator on all these various heads. This dissertation by Laing is an ingenious and elaborate display of criticism; but the Gothic predilection of the acute Orcadian had carried him too far, and subsequent researches have disproved some of his inferences and allegations. To settle the question, the Highland Society appointed a committee to inquire first, what poetry, of what kind, and of what degree of excellence, existed anciently in the Highlands, and was generally known by the denomination of Ossianic, from the universal belief that its author was Ossian, the son of Fingal; and secondly, how far that collection of such poetry published by Macpherson was genuine.

In answer to the first of these questions, the committee state with confidence an opinion "that such poetry did exist; that it was common, general, and in great abundance; that it was of a most impressive and striking sort, in a high degree eloquent, tender, and sublime." The second question, however, the committee found "much more difficult to answer decisively." They were possessed of no documents to show how much of his collection Mr Macpherson had obtained in the form in which he gave it to the world. The poems and fragments of poems they had been able to procure contained often the substance, and sometimes almost the literal expression of passages given by Mr Macpherson in the poems of which he published translations. "But the committee has not been able to obtain any one poem the same in title and tenor with the poems published by him. It is inclined to believe that he was in use to supply chasms, and to give connection by inserting passages which he did not find, and to add what he conceived to be dignity and delicacy to the original, by striking out passages, by softening incidents, by refining the language; in short, by changing what he considered as too simple or too rude for a modern ear, and elevating what in his opinion was below the standard of good poetry. To what degree, however, he exercised these liberties, it is impossible for the committee to determine." In fact, Macpherson had founded his epic poems on the ancient traditional fragments, as Shakspeare had founded his immortal dramas on the rude though popular basis of old plays, novels, and historical chronicles. Parts of Fingal are undoubtedly genuine, and have been written down from the recitation of parties who never read the Ossian of Macpherson. The Address to the Sun (which Laing attacked as an imitation of Milton) is also a genuine fragment, and other beautiful passages scattered throughout the poems have been traced to the original traditionary sources. Of the MSS. used by Macpherson one only has descended to us. This is a large collection of Celtic poems composed at various periods, which appears to have belonged to the Rev. James Macgregor, Dean of Lismore, partly written in 1512, and partly in 1527. The volume is now in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, and has lately been carefully examined by a competent Celtic scholar, the Rev. Thomas M'Lauchlan. Historical incidents and passages in Macpherson's Ossian are found in this MS.—as the death of Oscar, the story of Fainesalos (the Maid of Crac in Fingal), and the story of Cuchullin, and his son Conlaech, which was well known both in Ireland and the Highlands. The names of Fingal, Gaul the son of Morai, Oscar the son of Ossian, Garve the son of Starno, the Danes, Cuchullin &c., also abound; but there is one peculiarity in the Lismore MS., on which Macpherson was silent—it agrees with the Irish MSS. in the introduction of St Patrick, and in relating dialogues on Christianity between the Saint and Ossian, thus fixing the era of Ossian as that of St Patrick, and indicating that his country was not Scotland but Ireland. This point does not seem to us of great importance. The unfaithfulness of Macpherson being admitted, it is easy to account for the Celtic poems being found equally popular in both Ireland and the Highlands. The people were of the same race, spoke the same language, and had constant intercommunication. The bards passed from one country to the other; the traditional poetry and legends formed a common inheritance, which would gradually undergo adaptation to the different localities and events. Some fragments may be of great antiquity, describing the prowess of the Fingalians (whose names at least existed at a very early period), and it is in favour of this supposition that the Celtic language seems to have undergone no radical change. The Irish antiquaries have of late diligently explored the ample field of their early literature, and their publications throw much light on the history of the Celtic race in these islands.

The literary merits of Macpherson's Ossian, extravagantly overrated at first, have experienced the usual reaction in such cases, of being unduly depreciated and contemned. If the fragments had not possessed poetical imagination and real genius, they would never have excited the warm admiration of Gray, whose taste and sensibility were so exquisite. As pictures of actual society and manners, the poems are of course spurious and deceptive; no one will, in this respect, attempt their defence. But Mr Wordsworth has attacked them on the score of their alleged false imagery and want of descriptive fidelity. "In nature," he says, "everything is distinct, yet nothing defined into absolute independent singleness. In Macpherson's work it is exactly the reverse; everything (that is not stolen) is in this manner defined, isolated, dislocated, yet nothing distinct." This may partly arise from the style of the translator, consisting as it does of broken paragraphs, unconnected and deficient in cadence. The genuine fragments, however, show that such a style is substantially true to the original. The Celtic bards had a peculiar diction, and dealt only in brief strokes of description. They sketched the broad outlines of the mountain landscape, the leading objects of nature or of passion, and attempted no delineation of the finer features, or of the atmospheric phenomena so characteristic and attractive in mountainous districts. With them "autumn is dark on the mountains, gray mists rest on the hills, dark rolls the river through the narrow plain," and "the musing hunter alone stalks over the heath." The enumeration is simple but suggestive; and in the more ambitious passages—in the apostrophes to the setting sun, the moon, or tempest—in pictures of solitary desolation, and in the melancholy superstition which evokes the ghosts of the departed Finian chiefs—we have bursts of true pathos and elevated imagination. The chief drawback to this ancient poetry is the constant repetition of the same ideas, sentiments, and imagery, which, however natural in an early stage of literature and of society, soon pall upon all but very young and romantic readers. No poetry is read with greater avidity in youth, or is so soon and so completely abandoned in after years.

It is worthy of remark that Macpherson's Ossian, in a French version, was the favourite reading of the great Napoleon. It stimulated his imagination, and coloured his despatches and addresses to the army. When he told his soldiers in view of the Pyramids, that "the shades of forty centuries looked down upon them," we recognise the vivifying power of genius, but genius lighted at the torch of Ossian. The poems made the fortune of their translator. Their first effect was enriching him to the amount of nearly £1,2000, and obtaining for him the patronage of Lord Bute. Once brought into public notice, Macpherson's talents and energy soon secured preferment. He obtained a colonial appointment and pension; became, on his return to England, engaged in public affairs; and was an active supporter of government. His political pamphlets and letters at the period of the American war were highly popular, though perishing with the topics of the day that had called them forth. He attempted history, but without success proportioned to his labour or party zeal; and he egregiously failed in a translation of Homer in the style of Ossian. "Few people," as Scott said, "cared to see their old Grecian friend disguised in a tartan plaid and phalabeg." In public life Macpherson was now conspicuous, and he obtained the lucrative appointment of secretary to the nabob of Arcot, with a seat in the House of Commons. Finally he retired to his native district, purchased a considerable estate (the old patrimony of the Mackintoshes of Borlum), and, building a splendid mansion on his property, died there at the age of fifty-six, his death occurring in the same year that witnessed the decease of Burns. How different the fate of the two Scottish poets! Macpherson was a man of undoubtedly genius, but of defective taste and lax principle. His Celtic enthusiasm was the fount of his highest inspiration, and the reign of Ossian may be said to have died with him. The accomplished scholars of Ireland have resuscitated much more of the ancient minstrelsy; but it is immeasurably inferior to the Macpherson fabric; and though interesting to a few as illustrations of a past state of manners and feeling, it has no pretensions to be regarded as adding to the value of our poetical literature.