There are scattered sneers at Ossian's Poems throughout Macaulay's Essays, notably in his papers on Dryden and Dr Johnson. In the latter of these he says:—"The contempt he (Dr J.) felt for the trash of Macpherson was indeed just, but it was, we suspect, just by chance. He despised the Fingal for the very reason which led many men of genius to admire it. He despised it not because it was essentially common-place, but because it had a superficial air of originality." And in his History of England occur the following words:—"The Gaelic monuments, the Gaelic usages, the Gaelic superstitions, the Gaelic verses, disdainfully neglected during many ages, began to attract the attention of the learned from the moment when the peculiarities of the Gaelic race began to disappear. So strong was this impulse that where the Highlands were concerned men of sense gave ready credence to stories without evidence, and men of taste gave rapturous applause to compositions without merit. Epic poems, which any skilful and dispassionate critic would at a glance have perceived to be almost entirely modern, and which, if they had been published as modern, would have instantly found their proper place in company with Blackmore's Alfred and Wilkie's Epigoniad, were pronounced to be fifteen hundred years old, and were gravely classed with the Iliad. Writers of a very different order from the impostor who fabricated these forgeries," &c., &c. Our first objection to these criticisms is their undue strength and decidedness of language, which proclaims prejudice and _animus_ on the part of the writer. Macaulay here speaks like a heated haranguer or Parliamentary partizan, not like an historian or a critic. Hood says—"It is difficult to swear in a whisper"; and surely it is more difficult still to criticise in a bellow. This indeed points to what is Macaulay's main defect as a thinker and writer. He is essentially a dogmatist. He "does not allow for the wind." "Mark you his absolute _shall_," as was said of Coriolanus. No doubt his dogmatism, as was also that of Dr Johnson, is backed by immense knowledge and a powerful intellect, but it remains dogmatism still. In oratory excessive emphasis often carries all before it, but it is different in writing—there it is sure to provoke opposition and to defeat its own object. Had he spoken of Macpherson's stilted style, or his imperfect taste, few would have contradicted him, but the word "trash" startles and exasperates, and it does so because it is unjust; it is too slump and too summary. Had he said that critics had exaggerated Macpherson's merits, this too had been permitted to pass, but when he declared them in his writings to be entirely "without merit," he insults the public which once read them so greedily, and those great men too who have enthusiastically admired and discriminatingly praised them. Macpherson's connection with these Poems has a mystery about it, and he was probably to blame, but every one