Ossian Collection > Life and letters of James Macpherson

RUTHVEN SCHOOL. 43
the winter of 1755-6 that he was in Edinburgh ;
for in the following winter we find him back
again in Ruthven, and writing a brief and un-
favourable description of the city.
Macpherson was still too young to enter the
ministry, and he returned to Ruthven to look
about him for the means of making a livelihood.
He was hardly twenty ; and, for want of some-
thing better to do, he took over the charity
school in his native village, where he had already
managed to earn a little money during his vaca-
tion. As it was the only school in the whole dis-
trict from Speymouth to Lome, the position was
not undistinguished. The employment left him
plenty of leisure, and it was then that he wrote
most of his early poems. His first attempts
were not published, and they would probably
never have seen the light if the manuscript of
two of them had not come into the hands of
his most energetic opponent, who printed them
for a controversial purpose, just in the condition
in which they were found That Macpherson
never intended, perhaps never wished, to pubhsh
them is probable from the fact that they were
found in their first rough draft, stitched together
into the form of a small note-book. That they