sertions, he set about looking for proofs where they could not be found. It is probable that his journey to the Hebrides was in a great measure occasioned by his desire to obtain positive proofs of the non-existence of these poems. But the indispensible pre-requisite for this enquiry was wanting. He was like a man who should visit a river without implements for fishing, and declare upon his return there were no fish, because he had caught none.Without understanding the language in which the poems were composed, the evidence of their antiquity, which was entirely local and intrinsic, could not be traced ;-he enquired of country gentlemen, advanced in life, and engrossed by its cares, what they knew of the remains of OSSIAN? They honestly told him they heard such poems in their youth, but had never thought or enquired about the authenticity of them, or of ascertaining the date of their antiquity, and that they had never heard them in a connected series. The Highland Presbyterian clergy, who on all other occasions shared in the contempt he avowed for that persuasion, seem to have gained great credit with him, because they shewed no extraordinary warmth in defence of these poems, as they appeared in the translation. He asked of Dr MACQUEEN, Whether the poems ever existed in the form in which JAMES MACPHERSON had given them to the world? The Doctor could not, consistently with his wonted probity, say they had; nor did he choose to give such an explanation as would afford a fair pretext for infidelity. The clergy in these remote placés were more estimable for the purity of their lives, and the

diligence of their evangelical labours, than remarkable for their taste in elegant literature. They rather, from a conscientious motive, maintained a kind of warfare with bards and sennachies, such as our more austere divines did with the theatre.

UPON the Reformation, they found the taste of the people vitiated by the legends of the monks, and the absurd and extravagant fictions of the latter bards; and that this acquired passion for the marvellous, laid them open to every kind of imposture, and made them less relish the simplicity of those truths in which it was the duty of the clergy to instruct them. It was no wonder, then, that in the indiscriminate war carried on by pious zeal against poetical fiction, these fragments, wrapt in a debasing cloud of adventitious matter, should meet with little favour or indulgence. Yet Dr MACPHERSON, whose probity and learning were universally respected, having led the way in elucidating these antiquities, some of the younger clergy of more cultivated taste, admired and studied them. With these however Dr JOHNSON did not chance to meet; and when he came to Edinburgh, where he met with people abundantly qualified to discuss with him all other points of polite literature, he could not, though he had been open to conviction, obtain any light upon this; a Scotchman, who is not a Highlander, being no better qualified to decide upon it, than a native of London is to judge of the authenticity of a poem in Welsh. The Doctor returned hardened in infidelity. The correspondence which succeed

ed is well known. In this the Doctor had greatly the advantage, both from the purity of his moral, and the dignity of his literary character; as well as from the violence with which the current of prejudice ran against his adversary.

GROWN quite regardless of his literary character, under all this hostility, Mr MACPHERSON devoted himself to more profitable pursuits, but did not find them a sufficient consolation for the severity with which he had been treated by the public,—a severity which he may be said to have in some measure justly incurred, by his presumptuous attempt to translate HOMER. Though wealthy, prosperous, and seemingly indifferent to public applause, the chagrin he felt at having so mingled falsehood with truth, that he could not separate them with credit to himself, preyed upon his spirits; and a short time before he died, he ordered the Gaelic originals of the translated poems to be printed for the satisfaction of his particular friends.

POSTSCRIPT.

SINCE writing the preceding Observations, I have seen a Dissertation on the subject, written with so much acuteness, learning, and force, as will probably render it in the general opinion conclusive. It would be tedious

and difficult to explain all the grounds on which the opinions I entertain are founded;-suffice it to say, that I still think as I did formerly, yet would not be understood to engage in controversy, where I only meant to amuse, and in some degree inform a friend; and chose this sub-. ject, because it was the only one I thought myself capable of showing him in a new light.

MORDUTH.

A FRAGMENT:

TRANSLATED FROM THE GAELIC.

It was the intention of the Translator to insert the Gaelic Originals of MORDUTH and the succeeding poem, in compliance with a wish expressed by Mr MACKENZIE, well known as the ADDISON of Scotland; but this volume having considerably exceeded its proposed size, and the Gaelic of both poems being already published in Gillies's and Macdonald's Collections, she contents herself with giving the Translations.

ARGUMENT.

MORDUTH, we are told, is the name of the aged hero, who, speaking in the first person, narrates part of the trans actions of his early life, relative to the wars then carried on between the Scotch and the Norwegians. He begins in a manner suited to pre-dispose the mind to regard him with mingled admiration and compassion. In an apostrophe to the wind, whose violence disturbed his meditations, he recurs to the days of his youth, when he ardently pursued the enemies of his country; and in foretelling the approaching weakness of the wind, when time should destroy its power, introduces an affecting allusion to his own feeble and forlorn state.