J. F. Campbell Collection > Report of the Committee of the Highland Society of Scotland, appointed to inquire into the nature and authenticity of the poems of Ossian

POEMS OP 0S3IAN. 4J>
embellifhed only by poetical imagery, and a refer-
ence to the belief of the employment and interven-
tion of departed fpirits, (the natural creed of thd
earlier periods of fociety), which the purer fpeci-
mens of the Fingalian poetry above alluded to ex-
hibit.
Mifs Brooke candidly fays, that mod of the poems
Ihe has publifhed are * of a later date than that in
which Offian flourifhed, and are fuppofed to be com-
pofitions of the 8th, 9th, ahd 10th centuries ;' but
ihe pleads, very juftly, for their favourable recep-
tion, in confideration of the numberlcfs beauties
which they contain. Whoever has looked with at-
tention on the hiftory of nations, or the progrefs of
civil fociety, will eafily conceive how the fuperior
cultivation of Ireland in literature, civil polity, and
a religious eftablifhment, might naturally tend to
produce fuch a change and corruption in the ancient
traditionary poems, as they feem to have experien-
ced in that country.
About the year 1780, Mr John Clark, land-
furveyor in Badenoch, publifhed tranflations of an-
cient Gaelic poetry, containing, among other pieces,
an entire poem, intituled Morduth, which, though
not one of thofe publifhed or taken notice of by
Macpherfon, pofTefTes a great deal of merit. This
poem, as publifhed by Clark, contains three divi-
fions, or, as they are termed, books. It has very
lately been given in a verfe tranflation, in a volume
of poems publifhed by the ingenious Mrs Grant of
D Laggan,