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

ABBe' CESAROTTl's dissertati ox. 325
some incidents that seenied to have run froni one
poem into another.* — I am very confident, that the
poems so arranged are different froni all other edi-
tions ; they have taken a certain air of regularity
and of art, in comparison with the disunited and
irregular manner of the original." In another place
Mr. Smith, speaking of ìMacpherson, remarks, " that
it must be confessed we have not the whole of the
poems of Ossian, or even of the coUection translated
by Mr. Macpherson ; yet still we have many of
them, and of almost all a part. The building is not
entire, but we have stili the grand ruins of it. "'-j'
In short, althougli ?\Iacpherson had not explicitly
imparted to the public the particular quality of his
compilation, he gave, however, in various parts of his
annotations, sufficient hints that this was the method
he adopted. In this place it is proper to observe, that
the very system of Macpherson's Mork may perhaps
demonstrate his shyness in showing freely the origi-
nal. He had in his possession several manuscripts of
Ossian, and he had among them the genuine poems
of Ossian, which were not to be found in any other
edition though dispersed in all. But the true Ossian,
as published in English, was only to be found in
the compilation made by himself, and transcribed by
his own hand. Whatever manuscripts therefore he
might have offered to the public, the incredulous
and malicious, on comparing the translation with
the text, and finding them strictly uniform, would
have said, that Macpherson had" counterfeited the
* See Note T, at the end of the Dissertation.
t See Note U, at the end of the Dissertalion.