Ossian Collection > Life and letters of James Macpherson

PEEFACE.
Among educated Englishmen Macpherson com-
monly passes for an audacious impostor who
published his own compositions as the work of
an ancient writer, and received due punishment
at the hands of Dr. Johnson. The historians
of literature compare him with Chatterton, and
brand him as a forger. Even those who re-
frain from giving him a harsh name treat him
with doubt and hesitation. An equal obscurity
envelops his life and actions and the nature of
his work ; and the result of ignorance or mis-
conception is that he has obtained something
less than justice.
If none but the great deserved a biography,
this book would not have been written. For Mac-
pherson was in no sense a great man : he was
a miscellaneous writer of considerable talent,
a busy journalist, a member of parliament, an
agent for an Indian prince, a popular and
prosperous citizen ; and, beyond the fact that