Ossian Collection > Aspects of poetry

268 THE POETRY OF THE [iX.
original, there are two divergent opinions as to the
composers of it. Some hold that the Gaelic was mainly
the composition of MacPherson and some of his friends,
who incorporated into it here and there certain ancient
fragments, but composed the larger portion of it them-
selves. It is further alleged that when the Gaelic had
been thus composed, MacPherson rendered it into the
stately, if sometimes tawdry, English, which we know as
Ossian. Others maintain that by far the larger portion
of the Gaelic is ancient, and that MacPherson supplied
only a few passages here and there to link together
his ancient originals. Hardly any one, however, is
prepared to argue that the long epics of Fingal and
Temora came down from a remote antiquity in the
exact form in which MacPherson published them. The
piecing together of fragments, often ill-adjusted and
incongruous, is too evident to allow of such a sup-
position.
The English and the Gaelic Ossian, as I said, lie
before us. Is it too much to hope that criticism may
yet decide the question? that some Gaelic Porson or
Bentley may yet arise, who shall apply to the documents
the best critical acumen, and pronounce a verdict which
shall be final, as to which of the two is the original,
which the translation ? If some one were to assert that
he had discovered a lost book of Homer, and were to
publish it with an English translation, the resources of
Greek scholarship are quite competent to settle whether