hero adduced from Barbour and the old Scottish writers. The absence of his name from the Chronicon Scotorum need mean no more than its absence from the Albanach Duan, which has been accounted for. And it may be pointed out in reply to Mr. Shaw's third objection, that a little village in Benderloch has been called Selma by its inhabitants from time immemorial.
Up to the year 1805 the arguments used in the Ossianic controversy had been purely hypothetical, and in the absence of tangible proof, had depended entirely upon points of scholarship and ingenuity of reasoning. Since that date, however, a mass of evidence of another kind has become available. And it should be noticed that the whole testimony of facts accumulated since then has gone to prove the authenticity of Macpherson's translation.
In 1807 was published the original Gaelic from which the English version of Ossian had been made, a publication by itself sufficient to destroy the greater part of the adverse criticism. Macpherson could not have written the Gaelic compositions. Again and again is his awkwardness in that language remarked by the correspondents of the Highland Society. Mr. Ewan Macpherson of Knock in Sleat, in his declaration before magistrates printed in the Report (p. 94), affirms most explicitly and positively that Macpherson was utterly unequal
