Ossian Collection > Life and letters of James Macpherson

252 JAMES MACPHERSON.
that circulated amongst them. Macpherson, he
declared, had never offered him any evidence of
any kind, but only thought of intimidating him
by noise and threats.
*' The state of the question is this. He and
Dr. Blair, whom I consider as deceived, say that
he copied the poems from old manuscripts. His
copies, if he had them, and I believe him to have
none, are nothing. Where are the manuscripts ?
They can be shown if they exist, and they never
were shown. ... A nation that cannot write, or
a language that was never written, has no manu-
scripts.
" But whatever he has, he never offered to show.
If old manuscripts should now be mentioned, I
should, unless there were more evidence than
can easily be had, suppose them another proof
of Scotch conspiracy in national falsehood. Do
not censure the expression ; you know it to be
true." ^
Macpherson had not said that he copied
the poem from old manuscripts, but that he
had put it together out of fragments, some of
them taken from manuscripts, and some from
oral recitation ; and Johnson, as appears by his
own statements, never examined the prefaces
and the notes in which Macpherson had ex-
plained the nature of his work. Boswell wrote
' 7th February, 1775.