Here, then, is a question, not of linguistic criticism, but of scientific fact--of geographical position, of atmospheric agency--which should be disposed of on its own merits, and which, like many others of the same sort, must ultimately transfer the whole inquiry to a much higher field than that of syllables and syntax. But the description in question, it may be objected, is very much exaggerated, and therefore cannot be relied on: which is the very objection Macpherson himself urged--that it is "the most extravagant fiction in all Ossian's poems." But if that was the case in his opinion, how could the passage be his own? It was easy enough either to remedy or explain it, if he could explain it, or not to introduce it. On the other hand, when rightly understood, there is no undue exaggeration in the account at all--not more than might be reasonably expected from a poet of the highest sensibility and the most vivid imagination in describing an incomprehensible natural phenomenon; not more, for example, than in "the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words" on Mount Sinai. Still it is not the question of descriptive exaggeration, but of scientific fact, that is now before us; and if the whole of the so-called conflict of Fingal with the Prince of the Power of the Air on Roraheid in Hoy was so utterly inexplicable to Macpherson, both as to place and character, that he speaks of it hopelessly as a story "concerning ghosts," on what principle of critical consistency, or of common sense, can he be said to have been the author of it? If the Septuagint translators, for example, had added a note of their own on the giving of the Law at Sinai, to the effect that it appeared "the most extravagant fiction" to them, at the same time transferring, in defiance of their own text, the entire scene from one end of the Red Sea to the other, would any reader in his senses accuse the Seventy of having fabricated not only the two chapters in question, but the whole Book of Exodus--even although the original had been now lost? Their very simplicity and ignorance would have acquitted them. Yet Macpherson, in similar circumstances, is to be held guilty, although he could have more easily cleared himself by altering or omitting the whole passage, than a man in London could prove by an _alibi_ that he had been guilty of no forgery at Inverness or Edinburgh six hours before! But if this hitherto incomprehensible passage in Ossian be genuine then the entire poem of _Carric-Thura_, which is identified with it in every word and syllable from beginning to end, must be genuine also.