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

36 LETTERS TO DR. BLAIR.
P. S — I have a just esteem for the translator's genius ?
and believe me, after the narrowest search I could make,
that there is a foundation in the ancient songs for eve-
ry part of his work ; but I am apt to believe, also, that
he hath tacked together into the poem, descriptions,
similes, nanies, Sec. from several detached pieces ; but
of this I can give no demonstration, as I met only with
fraements.
II. From Lord Auchinleck, dated Auchlnleck,
2d October 1764.
Reverend Sir^
In the short visit you favoured
me with, you told me of your intending to publish a new
Dissertation on your friend Ossian ; principally to instruct
the antiquity of the book, and that it is not an imposture.
Thinking on that subject, a particular occured to me,
which youll judge if proper to come into this new work,
vvliich I long to see. What I have in view is, an intrin-
sic proof of antiquity from a remarkable passage or ex-
pression which we meet wdth more than once in Ossian.
When a hero finds death approaching, he calls to prepare
his deer's horn, a passage which I did not understand for
a good time after Fingal was published, but came then to
get it fully explained accidentally. You must know that
in Badenoch, near the church of Alves, on the high-way
side, are a number of Tumuli. No body had ever taken,
notice of these, as artificial, till M'Pherson of Benchar, a
very sensible man, under an apprehension of their being
artificial, caused to cut up two of them, and found human
bones in them, and at right angles with tliem a red deer's
horn above them. These burials plainly have been be-
Core Christianity, for the corpse lay in thQ direction of