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xiv sufficiently indicate the existing attitude of the London critics towards Scottish men of letters. When, therefore, a translator appeared, professing to have found among the mountaineers of Scotland, whom it was the fashion of the hour to ridicule, the remains of a bard who should take rank among the greatest of the world's singers, it was not at all likely that his work would pass unchallenged. It was, indeed, as if a waterspout had suddenly discharged itself into the red-hot crater of a volcano. For a short time there was the silence of utter astonishment, and then the whole energies of literary London arose to destroy and expel the intruder. To Dr. Johnson and his anti-Scottish friends the discovery of such works of genius among the people of the "barbarous north" was so astonishing that they flatly declared it impossible; and at once there arose upon the subject as great a controversy, probably, as has ever raged in the arena of letters.

In the following year Macpherson printed a second instalment of translations—Temora, an Epic Poem in eight books, with other poems; and, as a specimen of the materials upon which his work was based, he annexed the original Gaelic to one of its divisions. With this publication Macpherson's contribution to the controversy may be said to have ended. It is true, he published a revised and rearranged version of the translations