THE POEMS OF OSSIAN
by
JAMES MACPHERSON
A PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE.
As Swift has, with some reason, affirmed that all sublunary
happiness consists in being well deceived, it may possibly be the
creed of many, that it had been wise, if after Dr. Blair's ingenious
and elegant dissertation on "the venerable Ossian," all doubts
respecting what we have been taught to call his works had forever
ceased: since there appears cause to believe, that numbers who
listened with delight to "the voice of Cona," would have been happy,
if, seeing their own good, they had been content with these poems
accompanied by Dr. Blair's judgment, and sought to know no more.
There are men, however, whose ardent love of truth rises, on all
occasions, paramount to every other consideration; and though the
first step in search of it should dissolve the charm, and turn a
fruitful Eden into a barren wild, they would pursue it. For those,
and for the idly curious in literary problems, added to the wish of
making this new edition of "The Poems of Ossian" as well-informed as
the hour would allow, we have here thought it proper to insert some
account of a renewal of the controversy relating to the genuineness
of this rich treasure of poetical excellence.
Nearly half a century has elapsed since the Publication of the poems
ascribed by Mr. Macpherson to Ossian, which poems he then professed
to have collected in the original Gaelic, during a tour through the
Western Highlands and Isles; but a doubt of their authenticity
nevertheless obtained, and, from their first appearance to this day,
has continued in various degrees to agitate the literary world. In
the present year, "A Report," springing from an inquiry instituted
for the purpose of leaving, with regard to this matter, "no hinge or
loop to hang a doubt on," has been laid before the public. As the
committee, in this investigation, followed, in a great measure, that
line of conduct chalked out by David Hume to Dr. Blair, we shall,
previously to stating their precise mode of proceeding, make several
large and interesting extracts from the historian's two letters on
this subject.
"I live in a place," he writes, "where I have the pleasure of
frequently hearing justice done to your dissertation, but never heard
it mentioned in a company, where some one person or other did not
express his doubts with regard to the authenticity of the poems which
are its subject; and I often hear them totally rejected with disdain
