harmonious versification. The original of this piece suffered even in the hands of Mr. Macpherson, though he has shewn himself inferior to no translator. The copy or edition which he had of this poem is very different from mine; I imagine it will, in that respect, be agreeable to Mr. Percy. The gentleman who gave it me copied it from an old MS. which Mr Macpherson had no access to before his 'Fingal' came abroad."
The Report from which these extracts are taken is not the only record of enquiries regarding the existence of ancient Gaelic poetry. In the Gentleman's Magazine for 1782–3 appear the results of an independent research by Mr. Thomas Hill. This gentleman, though unacquainted with the Gaelic language, succeeded in collecting from oral tradition and otherwise in the Highlands many traditional compositions of the greatest beauty.
Such testimony, ancient and modern, may be left to make its own answer to the dogmatic assertions of Highland barbarism fulminated by Dr. Johnson. And since many of the most beautiful passages in Macpherson's translation are among those specifically vouched for as genuine, the value of Mr. Laing's assurance that he had discovered the source of "every image," etc., needs no further comment.
After the production of so great a mass of
