herson 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