ause. The Editor of the _Reliques_ had
indirectly preferred a claim to the praise of invention, by not
concealing that his supplementary labours were considerable! how selfish
his conduct, contrasted with that of the disinterested Gael, who, like
Lear, gives his kingdom away, and is content to become a pensioner upon
his own issue for a beggarly pittance!--Open this far-famed Book!--I
have done so at random, and the beginning of the 'Epic Poem Temora,' in
eight Books, presents itself. 'The blue waves of Ullin roll in light.
The green hills are covered with day. Trees shake their dusky heads in
the breeze. Grey torrents pour their noisy streams. Two green hills with
aged oaks surround a narrow plain. The blue course of a stream is there.
On its banks stood Cairbar of Atha. His spear supports the king; the red
eyes of his fear are sad. Cormac rises on his soul with all his ghastly
wounds.' Precious memorandums from the pocket-book of the blind Ossian!

If it be unbecoming, as I acknowledge that for the most part it is, to
speak disrespectfully of Works that have enjoyed for a length of time a
widely-spread reputation, without at the same time producing
irrefragable proofs of their unworthiness, let me be forgiven upon this
occasion.--Having had the good fortune to be born and reared in a
mountainous country, from my very childhood I have felt the falsehood
that pervades the volumes imposed upon the world under the name of
Ossian. From what I saw with my own eyes, I knew that the imagery was
spurious. In Nature everything is distinct, yet nothing defined into
absolute independent singleness. In Macpherson's work, it is exactly the
reverse; every thing (that is not stolen) is in this manner defined,
insulated, dislocated, deadened,--yet nothing distinct. It will always
be so when words are substituted for things. To say that the characters
never could exist, that the manners are impossible, and that a dream has
more substance than the whole state of society, as there depicted, is
doing nothing more than pronouncing a censure which Macpherson defied;
when, with the steeps of Morven before his eyes, he could talk so
familiarly of his Car-borne heroes;--of Morven, which, if one may judge
from its appearance at the distance of a few miles, contains scarcely an
acre of ground sufficiently accommodating for a sledge to be trailed
along its surface.--Mr. Malcolm Laing has ably shown that the diction of
this pretended translation is