Ossian Collection > Enquiry into the authenticity of the poems ascribed to Ossian

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curious the trouble of exploring the
Ultonian Plains or Marifchal Wood.
For bulk and ftature, I would think it
would be no bad reprefentation of thofe
ancient heroes; and in this 1 am fure
they would excel them, as far as real
heroes do thofe of the imagination.
When the ebullitions of irafcibility
had fubfided, reafon had reaifumed her
feat, and the incompetency of the argu^
ment'um baculinu?n to prove a literary
truth was manifeft, the next refource
was to caufe Mr. Becket fubfcribe an
advertifement in a public news-paper,
to this purpofe :
** That, during fix weeks after the
** firft publication of the Poems, the
*' original manufcript lay at his fliop,
*' for the infpection of the curious.
(Signed) '* T. Becket."
This MS. was never iz^'A by any per-
fon. Why was it not left there at the
time the advertifement was publifhed ?
'" The