16. _Mr Archibald MacNeill, W.S._, with his brothers Lord Colonsay and Sir John MacNeill, who were all familiar with the Gaelic language, firmly believed that the Gaelic text of Macpherson belonged to the early centuries of the Christian era. Mr MacNeill published his views in a small volume in which legal acumen is brought to bear on the question, and which concludes as follows: “At what date Ossian lived we do not pretend to determine; but this, at least, is sufficiently clear, that the Gaelic Ossian was not the production of Macpherson or any author of modern times, but must be referred to a period of remote antiquity. It further appears from the internal evidence of these poems, that they refer to a period prior to the diffusion of Christianity and the era of clanship.” Of course Macpherson was clever enough, granting he elected to do so, to give a complexion of antiquity to his compositions. 17. My own opinion of the question I embody in the following propositions. I began the study of Macpherson’s Ossian some twelve years ago, and exercised myself then in translating many portions of it, so I am fairly familiar with it. I believe— (1.) That the English is a translation from Gaelic, probably from a ruder version than that published in 1807. (2.) That Macpherson is neither absolutely the author, nor merely the translator, of the poems connected with his name. (3.) That he formed his original Gaelic by joining and recasting old ballads, that he connected these ballads by paragraphs of his own composition, and that the newly-written recast matter constitutes the chief parts of the epics which he had thus formed, but in which, however, the spirit of the old productions still survives. (4.) That the Gaelic is far more elaborate than the English, is subtler in conception, less concrete in expression, and has been likely, before the text was finally published, the subject of many alterations and improvements. (5.) That on the whole the language of the text of 1807 is not, as some allege, essentially different from that of the ballads that are known to be genuine. (6.) That the metre of the Gaelic text is not more irregular than that of these same ballads, the chief difference being that while the latter are mostly made up of either trochees or iambs the former frequently mixes anapaests with trochees or iambs.