Ossian 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 MR. MACKENZIE, \£c. 61
In a preface prefixed to this publication, Macpherson
announced that there was a great deal of poetry of the
same kind still to be found in the Highlands and Islands ;
and, in particular, that there Was one work, of consider-
able length, which deserved to be stiled an Heroic Poem,
which might be recovered and translated, if encourage-
ment was given to such an undertaking. A subscription,
was immediately set about in the Parliament-House, and
a sum sufficient to make such an important search was soon
collected. Mr Macpherson made two journies through the
Highlands, on one of which Mr Home accompanied him,
and the result was, the publication st London first of Fin-
gal, and then of Temora.
As, before this accidental meeting with Mr Home, Mr
Macpherson had no idea of collecting and translating the
works of Ossian, the fact remained on my mind as a
strong ground-work for the evidence of the authenticity of
Ossian, when both the internal and external evidence was
so ably scrutinized by the late Dr Blair. Upon this
ground, I remain fully convinced that Macpherson did not,
and could not, with all his ability, which was great, fabri-
cate the poems ; though I am ready to admit, that after
Collecting all the scattered fragments, he tied them together
in form of heroic poemsj as Homer is said to have done
when he collected the songs of the bards of Greece.
Macpherson however had laid himself too much open to
the critics by attempting, in his Dissertations on Fingal,
to unite two things that must ever remain separate, viz.
J)oeticai fiction and historical truth, which I observe has
opened a late violent attack on him, by a writer of history,
which I have little doubt will prove as ineffectual to over«
throw the authenticity of Ossian, as any of the former
attacks.
I have only to add, that during my intimacy with Mac-
phsisan for two winters in London, in 1769 and TO, when
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