nd his
gratitude should shield my free communication from the reproach of
vanity.

"DEAR SIR, EDINBURGH, 18th March 1776. "As I ran through your volume of
history with great avidity and impatience, I cannot forbear discovering
somewhat of the same impatience in returning you thanks for your
agreeable present, and expressing the satisfaction which the performance
has given me. Whether I consider the dignity of your style, the depth
of your matter, or the extensiveness of your learning, I must regard
the work as equally the object of esteem; and I own that if I had not
previously had the happiness of your personal acquaintance, such a
performance from an Englishman in our age would have given me some
surprise. You may smile at this sentiment; but as it seems to me that
your countrymen, for almost a whole generation, have given themselves up
to barbarous and absurd faction, and have totally neglected all polite
letters, I no longer expected any valuable production ever to come from
them. I know it will give you pleasure (as it did me) to find that all
the men of letters in this place concur in the admiration of your work,
and in their anxious desire of your continuing it.

"When I heard of your undertaking, (which was some time ago,) I own I
was a little curious to see how you would extricate yourself from the
subject of your two last chapters. I think you have observed a very
prudent temperament; but it was impossible to treat the subject so as
not to give grounds of suspicion against you, and you may expect that a
clamour will arise. This, if anything, will retard your success with
the public; for in every other respect your work is calculated to
be popular. But among many other marks of decline, the prevalence of
superstition in England prognosticates the fall of philosophy and decay
of taste; and though nobody be more capable than you to revive them, you
will probably find a struggle in your first advances.

"I see you entertain a great doubt with regard to the authenticity of
the poems of Ossian. You are certainly right in so doing. It is indeed
strange that any men of sense could have imagined it possible, that
above twenty thousand verses, along with numberless historical facts,
could have been preserved by oral tradition during fifty generations, by
the rudest, perhaps, of all the European nations, the most necessitous,
the most turbulent, and the most unsettled. Where a supposition is so
contrary to common sens