Blair Collection > Treatise on the language, poetry, and music of the Highland clans

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 7
necessarily have consisted of different versions and different detached pieces,
according as different reciters were more or less correct or more or less retentive
in their memories of the different poems or parts of poems furnished by them
to the collectors. The preliminary steps to the translation, therefore, necessarily
were the collation, proper arrangement, and careful copying of these different
versions and different parts. The translator was assisted in this process by two
gentlemen, Mr ilacpherson of Strathmashie, and Captain Slorison of Greenock,
— two gentlemen of education and position in society, against whose honour and
integrity not one syllable had been breathed during the hundred years these
poems have been under a controversy more or less intense, until Mr Skene, who
has attained a distinguished position in the historical and antiquarian literature
of his country, suddenly discovers, from somebody too insignificant to be
remembered, that the whole three were fraudulent conspirators, and one of
them a great poet ! His words are : " Some years ago, I happened to pass a
couple of months in the neighbourhood of Strathmashie, and I recollect having
been informed at that time, but lij whom I cannot now tell, that after Lachlan
Macpherson's death, a paper was found in his repositories, containing the Gaelic
of the seventh book of Temora, in his own hand writing, with numerous
corrections and alterations, with this title, — •' First rude draft of the seventh
book of Temora.' "
I will not stop to remark on the inadequacy of the above to justify
the grave inference of ]\Ii- Skene. The poems published by the Rev. Dr Smith
were all, or many of them, claimed by a schoolmaster of the name of Kennedy, as
his own composition. Few believed him, and many knew that the claim was
false, the poems being known before he was bom, to old men still living ; but
the collection of ursgeuls by the Dean of Lismore, which gave occasion for Mr
Skene's Notes, exposed Ivennedy to an infamy which might, I think, have warned
Mr Skene against claiming the authorship of these poems for a man nameless
in literature. Mr Skene's claim for Strathmashie is fortunately exposed to a
similar discomfiture by the singular circumstance, namely, that the Seventh
Book of Temora referred to by Mr Skene, was published by Macpherson
himself in 1762, and used fifty-five years ago in this controversy by the
Eev. Dr Patrick Graham of Aberfoyle. Dr Graham proves by his translation
of Homer, of this book of Temora, and by bis poem of the " Highlander,"
which failed to obtain even a mediocre circulation, that Macpherson was
entirely incapable of writing such poems. The " Highlander" contains many
beautiful ideas, borrowed from Ossian and other ancient Gaelic bards ; but
Macpherson (like all plagiarists) was destitute of the genius and taste neces-
sary to compose a work in which his plagiarism would tell. The " Highlander"
and Macpherson's Homer, thus fell still-bom from the press ; and clearly show
that Macpherson was not qualified to write Ossian's poems. Dr Graham gives
the original as published by Macpherson himself, with a literal translation in
parallel lines, and Macpherson's translation under them, and clearly shows that
the Gaelic version is infinitely superior to the English version. He also shows
that Macpherson omitted or glossed over many passages of the originals, which,