The view of Dr Skene was scarcely maintained hitherto by any Scottish Gaelic scholar. Shaw in 1788 echoed Johnson’s sentiments. He began to read through Macpherson; and was held immediately to scorn by the Gaelic literati. 9. _The Late Rev. Thomas Pattison_, author of “The Gaelic Bards” (1866), and a man highly capable of forming judgment on the question, says, “When we consider that the finest parts of Macpherson’s Ossian are incontestably proved to have been popular poetry long anterior to his appearing, I think we should throw all prejudice aside, and affirm that whoever composed the poems attributed to Ossian, James Macpherson was not the man; and that whatever merit may belong to him as a translator, or whatever claim he may have to be considered their compiler in their present form, he has no legitimate title to be called their author. They are substantially older than he, probably by many centuries.” Pattison, like many others before him, dwells on Macpherson’s inferior Gaelic scholarship; but the facts do not warrant the conclusion drawn, that Macpherson was incapable of writing the Gaelic Ossian. Macpherson was a man of genius, and quite able to deliver himself in Gaelic as good and classical as many scholars that lived then or since. 10. _John F. Campbell, Esq._—The most formidable opponent of the authenticity of Macpherson’s Ossian recently is Mr Campbell of Islay. His earlier views, as expressed in the Highland Tales, were those of Gaelic-speaking Highlanders in general. But the longer he dwelt among the genuine old ballads found in manuscripts and in collections taken down from the oral recitation of Highlanders who lived before Macpherson’s time, the more confirmed he became in his growing conviction that Macpherson was both translator and author, and that the English was first composed. “My opinion now,” he says, “is that Macpherson’s translation was first composed by a great genius, partly from a knowledge of Scotch nature and folk-lore, partly from ideas gathered from books, and that he and other translators afterwards worked at it, and made a Gaelic equivalent whose merit varies according to the translator’s skill and knowledge of Gaelic. It is said that an early copy of the 7th book of Temora, with corrections in Strathmashie’s hand, was found after his death. I suppose that he revised a Gaelic translation by Macpherson, or by some other. His own Gaelic songs are idiomatic, whereas the 7th book of Temora is Saxon Gaelic in general, and nonsense in many passages. The English equivalent is like the rest of Macpherson’s work. In either case, because of matter, manner, orthography, and language, Macpherson’s English and Gaelic Ossian, must have been composed long after Dean MacGregor collected his book in Macpherson’s country, near his district, and in Morven.” This is the opinion of a Gaelic-speaking gentleman thoroughly conversant with the facts of the case, and eminently qualified to maintain his side of the question.