Ossian Collection > Galic antiquities

AUTHENTICITY OF OSSIAN's POEMS. 125
taught them to fpend their idle time to a far more valuable pur-
pofe than was done by their forefathers.
Above all, the extinction of the order of the bards haflened the
catailrophe of Ollian's poems. In a fmgle family only has any of
this order been retained fince the beginning of this century, and
the laft in that family came down to our times in a very advanced
life *. His favourite fongs are faid to have been the poems of Of-
fian. When age was coming on, memory beginning to fail, and
no fucceffor like to appear, he had fo many of them as he moft ad-
mired committed to writing. By a happy coincidence, Mr
Macpherfon overtook this bard, and got his treafure. This fact,
with the red book formerly mentioned, and fome other MSS, ac-
counts for his having found thefe poems in greater number and
perfection than they could ever fince be met with. Were there
any inducement, however, adequate to the labour and expence of a
careful iearch, the beft, though not perhaps the largefl, part might
ftill be found. Yet this, it is probable, would not produce, in re-
folved fceptics, any more conviction than the many remains alrea-
dy fhewn. Thofe gentlemen, therefore, who take pains to fatisfy
them in this manner, might as well give them up with a fmile, as
the people of Iona did the man who would noc believe that ever
they had, in that remote country, any cathedral ; for this good rea-
fon, becaufe he could fee nothing but the ruins of a building,
which, for ought he knew, he faid, might never have had a roof
upon it.
But we fuppofe enough has been faid to convince the unpreju-
diced of the authenticity of Oman. As to the oppofite elafs, fince
there
* Macvurich, bard to Clanronald.