Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/287

Rh of the point. He has treated in this manner many points of English history, among which is the celebrated question of the author of Eikon Basilike, concerning which he has fully proved, that whatever share Charles may have had in the suggestion or partial composition, Gauden was the person who prepared the work for the press. Mr Laing appears to have enjoyed a peculiar pleasure in putting local and personal prejudices at defiance, and exulting in the exercise of strong reasoning powers, he has not hesitated to attack all that is peculiarly sacred to the feelings of his countrymen; a characteristic strikingly displayed in his dissertation on the authenticity of Ossian's Poems. These productions required no depth of argument, or minute investigation of facts, to support their authenticity in the feelings of an enthusiastic people: and those who did not believe them, had not ti-oubled themselves with calmly meeting what they considered unconquerable prejudices.

Laing may, therefore, be considered as the first person who examined the pretensions of Macpherson on the broad ground of an investigation into facts. The arguments in this dissertation may be considered as of three sorts: the first, a logical examination of the arguments and proofs adduced, or supposed to be adduced, in favour of the authenticity of the poems, which, as the author has only sceptical arguments to produce, is the least interesting and satisfactory part of the investigation. The second body of arguments is drawn from contemporary documents and chronological facts, a portion of the subject in which the author showed his vast reading, and his power of clearly distinguishing truth from falsehood, constituting a body of evidence which finally demolished any claim on the part of "the Poems of Ossian" as authentic translations of the productions of a Highland bard of the fourth century. The third part of our division, containing an examination of the internal evidence drawn from the poems themselves, if not the most conclusive part of the examination, is certainly that which gives us the strongest idea of the author's critical ingenuity, and his powers as a special pleader. He produces terms and ideas which could not be presumed to have entered into the minds of the early inhabitants of Britain, from their never having encountered the circumstances which legitimately rouse them, such as the idea attached to the term "desert" which cannot be a part of speech with men who inhabit a wild and thinly peopled country, and can only be comprehended by those who are accustomed to see or hear of vast barren tracts of country, as opposed to cities, or thickly peopled districts.

He produces similes, and trains of ideas derived, or plagiarised from the writings of other authors, particularly from Virgil, Milton, Thomson, and the Psalms; and finally, he enters into a curious comparison between the method of arranging the terms and ideas in the Poems of Ossian, and that exhibited in a forgotten poem called "The Highlanders," published by Macpherson in early life. The author of such an attack on one of the fortresses of the national pride of Scotland, did not perpetrate his work without suitable reprobation; the Highlanders were "loud in their wail," and the public prints swarmed with ebullitions of their wrath. Mr Laing was looked on as a man who had set all feelings of patriotism at defiance: to many it seemed an anomaly in human nature, that a Scotsman should thus voluntarily undermine the great boast of his country; and, unable otherwise to account for such an act, they sought to discover in the author, motives similar to those, which made the subject sacred to themselves. "As I have not seen Mr Laing's History," says one gentleman, "I can form no opinion as to the arguments wherewith he has attempted to discredit Ossian's Poems: the attempt could not come more naturally than from Orcadians. Perhaps the severe checks given by the ancient Caledonians to their predatory Scandinavian predecessors raised prejudices not yet extinct. I con-