Dr Waddell seems to have been a believer, from his youth, in the authenticity of Ossian by what he calls moral instinct, founded merely on the characteristics of Macpherson's text—its simplicity, sublimity, and coherence. Judging of it by these attributes alone, he could never doubt it; and from this, the next step was easy and indeed necessary—if Ossian in his opinion was thus authentically true, Ossian ought also to be historically and geographically true; and therefore the whole, or at least the principal, object of his investigation has been to declare that truth by demonstrating the actual correspondence of nature to the letter of the translation, even where Macpherson himself had never seen it. And this undeniable fact, the ignorance of the translator as to the whereabouts of the places accurately described in his own text, is one of the strongest proofs he makes use of. This interesting method seems to have been suggested to him first by discoveries in the island of Arran, where the tomb of Ossian, and the graves of Fingal, Oscar, and Malvina were pointed out to him by the people, and authenticated by tradition. On examining all the allusions in the translation, they were found exactly to confirm the identity of these places; yet Macpherson never was in Arran. Next, Dr Waddell proceeded to examine the whole Frith of Clyde, where equally distinct proofs awaited him. He shews that the Clyde must have been a fiord to Rutherglen and Bothwell in Ossian's day, and that Balclutha must have been identical with Castlemilk, or some other ruined fortress near Rutherglen, and not as commonly supposed, with Dunglass or Dumbarton. The Kelvin, both in name and character is the Colavain of Ossian, and was a fiord up to Kilsyth; near which he discovers the actual scene of Comala's death, and of the triumph of Oscar over Carausius, a little to the east. Here too, Macpherson was completely at fault. In the north of Ireland, from the descriptive text of Fingal and Temora, the valley of the Six-Mile-Water is found to correspond in the most minute particulars with the scenes of these poems, whereas Macpherson by mere guess-work placed them much farther south and west. In the Orkney Islands, by a similar process of minute verification, he finds Carricthura at Castle Thuroe in Hoy; and the celebrated scene of Fingal's encounter with Loda, near the well-known Dwarfie Stone on the west coast of that island. In Iceland, by a most irrefragable demonstration, he identifies the dried-up fountain at Reikum with the "fount of the mossy stones," and the plain of Thingvalla with the plain of the pestiferous Lano—both in the War of Inisthona.
Now the only, and to many the great, difficulty in the way of accepting such proof in its entirety, is the boldness of the author's assumption that the Frith of Clyde must have been from seventy to eighty feet higher in Ossian's era—that is, in the time of the Romans—than it now is; but if this be proved it adds another conclusive proof to the authenticity of Ossian, for Macpherson was ignorant likewise of this. The possibility of such a fact has already been loudly challenged by a scientific reviewer in the Scotsman, whose objections, however, have been conclusively answered by Dr Waddell in the same paper, and in the last three numbers of the Celtic Magazine; indeed the exquisite photographic views in the work of the actual marine formations on the Clyde, and the sectional views of the coast at other points, leave no room for serious doubt on the subject.
Besides all this, Dr Waddell adds a critical dissertation on Macpherson's text, to shew the impossibility of his having tampered with the original, illustrating this part of his argument by references to Berrathon, Croma, and Conlath and Cuthona. He has also introduced an interesting statistical summary, gathered from Ossian, of the manners, customs, religious observances, and scientific knowledge of the age; which may be studied with much benefit. In the appendix we have a curious history of the Irish people from the earliest traditional dates down to the time of Ossian, compiled from reliable chronicles, hitherto, we suspect, very little known; the whole book being illustrated by many beautiful wood-cuts and original maps. The exquisite little poem which completes the work we cannot omit:—
TO GOATFELL, ARRAN:
ON FIRST SEEING IT FROM THE SHORE.
[AT BRODICK.]
Born of earthquakes, lonely giant,
Sphinx and eagle couched on high;
Dumb, defiant, self-reliant,
Breast on earth and beak in sky:
Built in chaos, burnt out beacon,
Long extinguished, dark, and bare,
Ere life's friendly ray could break on
Shelvy shore or islet fair:
Dwarf to atlas, child to Etna,
Stepping-stone to huge Mont Blanc;
Cairn to cloudy Chimborazo,
Higher glories round thee hang!