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

LETTERS TO DR. BLAIR. 13
equal, as far as they go, to any thing that Mr RIacpherson
has yet published. If so, the literary world should do
that gentleman the justice to believe, that he is not himself
the real author of the compositions he has ascribed to Os-
sian, or should allow that the Highlands have heretofore
produced bards of a character not less exalicd than that of
which Ossian was possessed, according to Mr Macpher-
son's account of him.
You desire me to tell impartially how far the translations
given by the publisher of Ossian's works agree with the
original, as far as I have had occasion to see or hear the
latter.
It is, I think, no easy matter to lay down an exact sys-
tem of rules which a translator should inviolably obser\'e,
esi^ecially when the work in which he is engaged, is of
the poetical kind. Far less is it easy for a critic, a critic
abler beyond comparison than I, to determine, whether
Mr Macpherson has taken unpardonable liberties in his
version ; unless that critic should have a number of manu-
scripts, or one at least, before him. The oral editions
given by the several persons who have reiicarsed the very
same parts of Ossian's poems in my presence, are far from
being exactly the same. Some of these rehearsers omitted
several wliole stanzas, which others repeated before me.
Some of them inverted the order of v^hole sentences, and
whole stanzas. Others differed greatly from the rest in the
expression, here and there in the sentiments, in the versili-
cation, in tlie names of the heroes, and scenes of acJon ;
and that, too, without doing any considerable hurt to the
merit of the posm, all things considered.
Those who are ready to believe that Mr Macpherson
has given his translation of Ossian's works from an an-
cient manuscript, cannot pretend to determine that his ver-
sion is too free, too incorrect, or faulty in any respect, until
they are able to ccmparc it with the original contained in