I must add further, on the historic evidence, that several Gaelic pieces, and these among the gems of Ossianic poetry, were published by Gillies in 1786; that some of these are found in the Irvine MS. about 1800; that there is no proof of Macpherson having furnished any of these; and that the genuineness of one of them, "The Sun Hymn," given seem to be beyond the possibility of cavil.
From all this it appears to me undoubted that Macpherson began his work with Gaelic MSS., that he founded his English on them, and that various portions of his work were known in several quarters of the country forty years before he published his Gaelic. The subsequent disappearance of all MSS. containing his Gaelic is very remarkable, and is much founded on by Mr Campbell. But the history of literature affords various instances of the preservation of a book depending on one solitary MS. The case of the great Niebelungen-Lied—unknown for centuries, and brought to light through the accidental discovery of a MS.—is quite in point; and to come nearer home, two years ago, only one perfect copy of the first Gaelic book ever printed, Bishop Carewell's translation of John Knox's liturgy, was in existence. It may be, then, that when Macpherson destroyed his Gaelic MSS. he destroyed all in which his poetry was to be found. Again, it is asked, when Highlanders in the present day recite so many heroic ballads, why do they not recite Macpherson's? I answer that there being now forgotten is no proof that they were never remembered. A hundred years may obliterate many things among a people. The last hundred years have wrought such obliterations in the Highlands of Scotland as to make it no cause of wonder that heroic poetry then remembered should now be forgotten.
I must restrict myself to a very few words on the internal evidence—though it is on this the question must be finally decided, if it ever is to be decided. As to the inference from comparing the Gaelic and English, I am sorry to say that I am entirely at variance with Mr Campbell. The more I examine the subject, the deeper is my conviction that the freeness of the Gaelic, the fulness of its similes, and its general freshness incontestably prove it to be the original. I would refer especially to the sea-pieces (e.g., Carhon, ll. 48-52.) In Gaelic they are vivid and graphic—in English tame, and almost meaningless—a fact such as might naturally be expected from the words of a true mariner being translated by a thoroughly "inland bred man" like Macpherson, but absolutely irreconcilable with his having written the Gaelic. Mr Campbell himself in his admirable work of the "West Highland Tales," vol. 4, p. 142, et seq., has some striking and conclusive remarks on the internal evidence of the priority of the Gaelic to the English; and I sincerely hope, when he considers them again, they will induce him to return to his first faith.
Much might be said on the structure of the Gaelic—especially the Gaelic of the 7th Book of Temora, published by Macpherson in 1763, which differs widely from any other Gaelic that I have met with; and much of the whole character of Ossian, whether Gaelic or English, being so absolutely unlike all Macpherson's other compositions—many and well known; but I must conclude by repeating that Mr Campbell's theory "makes confusion worse confounded"—in asking us to set at nought the various facts which I have stated, demands a moral impossibility; and that whatever light may be thrown on the subject from the new Celtic Chair, we must in the present state of our knowledge admit Gaelic to be the original, and Macpherson to be the translator of the Ossianic poems.—I am, &c.,
Archibald Clerk, LL.D.
REMNANTS OF GAELIC POETRY.
The name of Lachlan Macpherson, Esq. of Strathmashie, is well known to those who are conversant with the dissertations on the poems of Ossian. About the year 1760 he accompanied his neighbour and namesake, James Macpherson, Esq. of Belville, in his journey through the Highlands in search of those poems, he assisted him in collecting them, and in taking them down from oral tradition, and he transcribed by far the greater part of them from ancient manuscripts to prepare them for the press, as stated by himself in a letter to Dr Hugh Blair of Edinburgh. He was beyond all doubt a man of great powers of mind, and a Celtic poet of no mean order. He died at the comparatively early age of forty years, greatly lamented by his contemporaries, leaving behind him no written literary production.