Ossian Collection > Essay on the authenticity of the poems of Ossian

OF OSSIAN'S POEMS. 37
is founded on the utter improbability, that
such a period of refinement, as this, existed
amongst the Caledonians, previously to that
barbarism, into which they have been found,
a few centuries afterwards, to have sunk.
This argument is detailed, in the first vo-
lume of his History of Scotland, (p. 44.) and,
in the opening of his Dissertation, it is pro-
nounced by him to be unanswerable.
But, I may be permitted to ask, whether
the history of nations is not full of similar
instances of change in the condition of so-
ciety ? Let us look back, for a moment, to
ancient Egypt, the cradle of the sciences ;
and the stupendous monuments of whose
progress in philosophy, and in the arts, have
bid defiance to the depredations of time,
and of the elements. Do we not there be-
hold a people passing from the height of re-
finement to the most sordid ignorance, and
to the lowest degrees of barbarism ? From
Egypt, let us turn our eyes to Greece, the