Page:Poems of Ossian.djvu/15

Rh compositions were attributed to Ossian, the son of Fingal, a warrior bard of distant antiquity. For the collation and translation of the poems, and for  the determining of obsolete words, the collector  engaged the assistance of Mr. Gallie, afterwards  minister in Badenoch, as well as of Mr,  Macpherson of Strathmashie. Presently, by the advice of friends, he removed to London; and  there, in 1762, under the patronage of Lord Bute,  he published the first results of his labour. These were two volumes of literal prose translations  entitled Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem, in Six  Books, with other lesser poems.

At that time the dominating figure among the literary coteries of the metropolis was Dr. Samuel Johnson, the eminent dictionary maker; and his  violent prejudices against everything Scottish were  greatly in fashion. Londoners, besides, had not forgotten or forgiven the panic into which they had  been thrown seventeen years previously by the  march to Derby of the Highland host under the  young Chevalier. The fact, therefore, that a book hailed from the north side of the Border was by  no means, just then, a passport to its kindly reception. The coldness with which Hume, the most illustrious historian of his time, had lately been  received, and the furious attacks which were killing  poor Smollett, the greatest novelist of the day,