Ossian Collection > Life and letters of James Macpherson

i84 JAMES MACPHERSON.
since the Union had made them popular.
In political life they formed a compact and
isolated body, subject to ignominious dis-
abilities and peculiarly liable to corruption.
The rising had put the seal to this national
hatred ; and thereafter if a writer hailed
from north of the Tweed, the fact was a
passport to abuse. Hume himself, who had
seen the first volume of his History attacked
with extraordinary rancour by all parties alike,
was so much disgusted by this rage against
his countrymen, that he more than once re-
solved never to set foot again on English
ground, nor have anything further to do with
what he contemptuously called " the barbarians
who inhabit the banks of the Thames ". Garrick
was afraid to play Macbeth in tartan and kilt
for fear of thereby damning the piece ; ^ and
in Macklin's Man of the World the ridicule
of the Scotch in the person of Sir Pertinax
MacSycophant was received with the wildest
applause. If for many years before and after
Macpherson's productions appeared, it was
commonly held that no good thing could
come out of Scotland, it is clear that with
^ See Doran's Jacobite London, ii. 350.