s at his publishers', Beckett and De Hondt, Strand, London. He
advertised in the newspapers that he had done so; offered to publish them
if a sufficient number of subscribers came forward; and in the _Literary
Journal_ of the year 1784, Beckett certifies that the manuscripts had
lain in his shop for the space of a whole year."[14]

But this was more than twenty years after. Mr. Clerk does not show that
Johnson or Laing or Shaw or Pinkerton, or any of MacPherson's numerous
critics, ever saw any such advertisement, or knew where the manuscripts
were to be seen; or that--being ignorant of Gaelic--it would have helped
them if they had known; and he admits that "MacPherson's subsequent
conduct, in postponing from time to time the publication, when urged to
it by friends who had liberally furnished him with means for the
purpose . . . is indefensible." In 1773 and 1775, _e.g._, Dr. Johnson
was calling loudly for the production of the manuscripts. "The state of
the question," he wrote to Boswell, February 7, 1775, "is this. He and
Dr. Blair, whom I consider as deceived, say that he copied the poem from
old manuscripts. His copies, if he had them--and I believe him to have
none--are nothing. Where are thee manuscripts? They can be shown if
they exist, but they were never shown. _De non existentibus et non
apparentibus eadem est ratio._" And during his Scotch trip in 1773, at a
dinner at Sir Alexander Gordon's, Johnson said: "If the poems were really
translated, they were certainly first written down. Let Mr. MacPherson
deposit the manuscripts in one of the colleges at Aberdeen, where there
are people who can judge; and if the professors certify their
authenticity, then there will be an end of the controversy. If he
does not take this obvious and easy method, he gives the best reason to
doubt."

Indeed the subsequent history of these alleged manuscripts casts the
gravest suspicion on MacPherson's good faith. A thousand pounds were
finally subscribed to pay for the publication of the Gaelic texts. But
these MacPherson never published. He sent the manuscripts which were
ultimately published in 1807 to his executor, Mr. John Mackenzie; and he
left one thousand pounds by his will to defray the expense of printing
them. After MacPherson's death in 1796, Mr. Mackenzie "delayed the
publication from day to day, and at last handed over the manuscripts to
the Highland Society,"[15] which had them printed in 1807, nearly a