Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 6.djvu/181

Rh We come now to consider the grounds of the belief, that the poems are in part genuine, and in part spurious; including a charge of interpolation, and of false translation. What has been already said having necessarily included all the ramifications of the controversy, the consideration of this point need not detain us long, for happily the evidence is not only quite at hand, but of the most conclusive and satisfactory description. That some portion of Macpherson's English poems are genuine, at least in so far as that can be considered genuine, of which the utmost that the committee of the Highland Society found themselves warranted in saying, after much and careful inquiry, was, that it bore a strong resemblance to certain fragments which they themselves had obtained, is beyond doubt. Macpherson, as before said, certainly did gather some scraps of poetry in the Highlands, and as certainly did make some use of them in the composition of his poems. But that he introduced a great deal of his own, that he interpolated, and that he translated falsely the little he got, is equally certain. The fact is incontrovertibly established by Or Graham, to whose able work on the subject, entitled " An Essay on the Authenticity of the Poems of Ossian," we refer the reader for more full information, and is thus confirmed by the committee of the Highland Society, who, after stating in their Report that they had " not been able to obtain any one poem the same in title or tenor with the poems published by him," proceed to say, "It (the committee) is inclined to believe that he (Macpherson) was in use to supply chasms, and to give connexion, by inserting passages which he did not find, and to add what he conceived to be dignity and delicacy to the original composition, 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." What immediately follows this sentence, though not relevant to the point immediately under discussion is too important to be passed over. The committee goes on to say, " To what degree, however, he exercised these liberties, it is impossible for the Committee to determine." Now, this means, if it means any thing, that the interpolations were such close imitations of the original, that, of the whole poems, it was impossible to distinguish which was Ossian's and which Macpherson's; therefore, that the poetry of the latter was as good as that of the former. An admission this, that would seem to settle the point of Macpherson's ability to forge the poems, a point so strongly insisted upon by the defenders of their authenticity, by showing that he was competent to write them, and, in accordance with this, it may be asked, if he wrote a part thus excellently, why might he not have written the whole ? Dr Graham, it is true, has, in several instances, detected " Macpherson's bombast," but this only shows that Macpherson has occasionally fallen into an error, which it was next to impossible to avoid altogether in a work written in the peculiar style of Ossian's poems.

There still, however, remains one overpowering circumstance, which, if there were no other evidence against the fidelity of Macpherson, would probably be held by most unprejudiced inquirers as quite conclusive of the whole question. The "Originals" correspond exactly with the "Translations," in language, and indeed in every point How can this be reconciled to the fact admitted by Macpherson himself, that he took certain liberties with the original Gaelic? The "Originals," when published, might have been expected to exhibit such differences with the "Translations," as would arise from Mr Macpherson's labours as an emendator and purifier of the native ideas. But they do not exhibit any traces of such difference. The unavoidable conclusion is, that the Originals, prepared by Macpherson, and published by Sir John Sinclair, were either