Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

6 A PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE.
pui*pose of leaving, with regard to this matter, ' no hinge
or loop to hang a doubt on,' has been laid before the
public. As the Committee, in this investigation, fol-
lowed, in a great measure, that line of conduct chalked
out by David Hume to Dr. Blair, we shall, previously
to stating their precise mode of proceeding, make se-
veral large and interesting extracts from the historian's
two letters on this subject.
' I live in a place,' he writes, * where I have the
pleasure of frequently heai-ingjustice done to your Dis-
sertation, but never heard it mentioned in a company-,
where some one person or other did not express his
doubts with regard to the authenticity of the poems
which are its subject ; and I often hear them totally re-
jected with disdain and indignation, as a palpable and
most impudent forgery. This opinion has, indeed, be-
come very prevalent among the men of letters in Lon-
don ; and I can foresee, that in a few years the poems, if
they continue to stand on their present footing, v.illbe
throvvn aside, and will fall into final oblivion.
' The absm-d pride and caprice of Macpherson him-
self, who scorns, as he pretends, to satisfy any body
that doubts his veracity, has tended much to confii-m
this general scepticism ; and I must own for my part,
that though I have had many particular reasons to
believe these poems genuine, more than it is possible
for any Englishman of letters to have, yet I am not
entirely without my scruples on that head. You think,
that the internal proofs in favour of the poems are
very convincing : so they are ; but there are also in-
ternal reasons against them, particularly from the man-
ners, notwithstanding all the art with which you have
endeavoured to throw a vemish* on that circumstance ;
and the preservation of such long and such connected
poems, by oral tradition alone, during a course of four-
teen centuries, is so much out of the ordinary course
of human affairs, that it requires the strongest reasons
to make us believe it. My present purpose, therefore,
is to apply to you in the name of all the men of letters
Committee, by Henry Mackenzie, Esq. its convener, or chairman.
With a copious Appendix, containing some of the principal do-
cuments on which the Report is founded. Edinburgh, 1605.' 8vo.
pp. 343. * So in MS.