"LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES MACPHERSON."
[To THE EDITOR OP THE BPECTATOP..",1 Srn,—In the course of the generous notice which you were pleased to take of my "Life and Letters of James Mac- pherson," in the Spectator of July 14th, you observe that I appear " to have come to the conclusion that his fraud, if it was a fraud, was something like Mrs. Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese,' a flight of fancy of a harmless kind." Permit me to say that I am far from coming to such a con- elusion. In describing Macpherson's life, character, and attain- ments, and the origin, reception, and extraordinay effect of the Ossianic poems, I stated, as clearly and impartially as I could, all the evidence known to me which could in any way affect the question of their authenticity, so as to put the reader hi a position to form a judgment for himself. But I was also careful to state the conclusion to which, in my judg- ment, the evidence irresistibly leads. I believe that when every allowance is made for the freedom of treatment usual in the eighteenth century, Maepherson's productions were in a large measure versions of poems commonly recited in the Highlands. His so-called epics were confessedly pieced together out of fragments ; and I have given my reasons for supposing that in turning these fragments into what was at that day considered elegant English, he was assisted by Home, the author of "Douglas," and by Blair. We cannot judge Macpherson's work by our standards. Accuracy in these matters is an entirely modern invention.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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