J. F. Campbell Collection > Poems of Ossian > Volume 3

ABBE' CESAROTXr's DISSERTATI ON. 317
their disposition to any pious fraucl is evident, in
propagating the Ossianic belief*
After this pui)lication, Ossian appeared utterly un-
done. But why r
Mulciber in Trojam, pro Troja stahat Apollo.
Shaw, witli all his boldness, had no great cause to
triumph. It seems, that Macpherson did not trouble
himself to answer so insolent and impudent an attack.
A valiant champion, however, undertook to tìght the
battle for hini, and returned Shaw, as they say, titfor
tat. This was Clark himself, who, two years before,
had published the fVorks of the Caledonian Bards. He
represents Ossian's enemy in the most odious light,
as a man unprincipled, sellìsh, revengeful, ungrate-
ful towards his best friends, a flatterer of Johnson ;
and above all, an impostor, a barefaced slanderer,
who was in perpetual contradiction witli hiniself and
truth. He evidently provcs all this by facts, by
authentic testimonies, by letters of the persons in-
troduced in this learned controversy, and by com-
paring Shaw's own writings, and contrasting his
former sentiments with those delivered in his in-
quiry.
Clark mentions, that Shaw liad some years before
proposed to him to print a general collection of all
the Caledonian poems, and to publish them in frag-
ments, or as popular ballads ; giving in separate
volumes the Gaelic text, and the English transla-
tion. He was angry with Macpherson, not because
he had published the supposed poems, but because he
* See Note L, at the cnd of the Disscrtation.