Ossian Collection > Life and letters of James Macpherson

RECEPTION OF THE POEMS. g
It was in the year 1760 that this new star
appeared in the northern heavens ; for more
than half a century it shone with great splen-
dour ; and though its fires have long since paled,
it can still be seen by eager observers in certain
latitudes.
But its size and brilliance and the matter
of which it was composed were everywhere
debated. The poems were hardly read by the
men of letters in Edinburgh before their authen-
ticity was suspected ; and a controversy arose
which is not yet extinct. It began in a gentle
form with the publication of a few random
fragments ; even though in the almost unani-
mous opinion of the best judges there was little
reason to doubt that the pieces which Macpher-
son produced in English were genuine specimens
of rude Gaelic verse. But when he collected
a large number of these waifs and strays of
Highland poetry, and under the notion that he
was dealing with fragments of a regular epic
assigned to them all a like antiquity, and gave
them a unity which perhaps they did not pos-
sess ; when he rendered them in an orderly
form, and in a free and polished paraphrase,
and presented the six books of Fingal and the