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240 SCOTTISH ECCENTRICS
Macpherson would not have met that need, or achieved
any European fame, if he had been a true Scottish poet,
a true translator of true Gaelic poetry into English, or, in
his own right, the greatest Gaelic poet to date. In any of
these roles he would scarcely have been heard of. The fact
that the English and European interest insists upon a
fraudulent conception of the Gaelic genius — that it is in-
capable of assimilating other than the most erroneous
ideas of that genius and, having done so, has the power
to carry these back and pollute the very springs of Gaelic
genius — it only justifies a fraud such as Macpherson 's is
generally assumed to be in this strictly literary sense. It
would also have rendered anything other than he actually
did in translating Gaelic originals into English no less of
a fraud, and a species of fraud that belongs to all trans-
lating and which is not generally regarded as fraudulent
at all. The motive in such cases is not fraudulent; the
result inevitably is. Dr. Magnus found gentler terms for
the process when he said that, in literature generally at
this time, the appeal of the writers "was couched in lan-
guage which found a ready way to men's hearts. That
human feeling and natural phenomena were fused or
forced into harmonious relationship —
All, all conspire
To raise, to soothe, to harmonise the mind,
this was an implement of its success, and it is arguable
that the success was quickened by the fact that many of
the writers were not in the first rank. The mood was com-
municated more readily to the middle classes. Burke per-
ceived this imminent danger in the new thought, and
there is a sense in which the note of the eighteenth cen-
tury was sublimated after the ordeal of the French
Revolution. Fused, or forced, we said just now, and amid
all this transfusion of feeling and translation of books,
there was bound to be some forcing of sentiment. The
conspiracy between Nature and man would sometimes
have to be assisted. James Macpherson and Thomas