Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian > Volume 3

IjS A CRITICAL DISSERTATIOIT
have been contrived and executed in the
Highlands of Scotland, two or three cen-
turies ago ; as up to this period, both by
manufcripts, and by the teftimony of a
multitude of living witneffes, concerning
the uncontrovertible tradition of thefe
poems, they can clearly be traced. Now,
this is a period wheo that country enjoyed
no advantages for a corapofition of this
kind, which it may not be fuppofed to
have enjoyed in as great, if not in a greater
degree, a thoufand years before. To fup-
pofe that two or three hundred years ago,
when we well know the Highlands to have
been in a ftate of grofs ignorance and bar-
barity, there (hould have arifen in that
country a poet, of fuch exquifite genius,
and of fuch deep knowledge of mankind,
and of hiftory, as to diveft himfelf of the
ideas and manners of his own age, and to
give us a juft and natural pidlure of a ftate
of fociety ancienter by a thoufand years ;
one who could fupport this counterfeited
antiquity through fuch a large colledion
of poems, without the leaf! inconfillency j
and who, poflelTed of all this genius and
art, had, at the fame time, the felf- denial
of concealing himfelf, and of afcribing his
own works to an antiquated bard, with-
out the impofture being deteded j is a
fuppofition that tranfcejids all bounds of cre-
dibility.