Mr Macbain, representing the midland and northern Highlands, having now concurred, the students of the Gaelic language north and south unite thus in regarding Macpherson’s Gaelic Ossian as compositions of the last century. These compositions are great original works, and ought to be thus described. Their spirit is ancient and Celtic, though their form is modern. They, James Macpherson their author, and Gaelic literature stand in the same relation to one another that we find illustrated in the case of the “Idyls of the King,” Alfred Tennyson, and Cymric literature. The only difference is that Tennyson has not given us the “Idyls” in Welsh as well as in English, and that Macpherson’s English version is in prose instead of being in blank verse. As long as Gaelic scholars of undoubted respectability believed otherwise, it was difficult for outsiders like the Blackies, Ebrards, and Waddells, who discussed the question, to be certain of their conclusions; but henceforth it will be inexcusable in any man of letters to argue for the old views, as Mr George Eyre-Todd does in an introduction to the “Poems of Ossian,” published in the _Canterbury Poets_ series (1888) without taking any cognisance of the latest deliverances of those most entitled to express an opinion. For a long time the controversy regarding the poems of Ossian had only the English version for its critical basis; so it was unreasonable then to expect a satisfactory solution of the vexed question of authorship. Those who knew the language could only guess at the originals; and those who did not know it had to be satisfied with all they could make of the English. Both parties occupied a position critically absurd. The one side ignorant of the language could not presume to pronounce whether the poems were or were not a translation; and the other had not yet the materials for judgment before them. But now in the year 1807 appeared the long looked-for and much discussed Gaelic originals of the Ossianic translations published some forty years previously. The following is the title-page in full:—“The Poems of Ossian, in the Original Gaelic, with a literal translation into Latin, by the late Robert Macfarlane, A.M., together with a Dissertation on the Authenticity of the Poems by Sir John Sinclair, Bart., and a translation from the Italian of the Abbe Cessarotti’s Dissertation on the Controversy respecting the Authenticity of Ossian, with Notes and a Supplementary Essay, by John McArthur, LL.D., published under the sanction of the Highland Society of London. _Magna est veritas et praevalebit._ Vol. I. _London._ [Printers and Publishers’ names], 1807, pp. ccxxxii., 278. “—— —— —— Vol. II.,” pp. 390. “—— —— —— Vol. III.,” pp. 576. “Dana Oisen Mhic Fhinn, air an cur amach air son maith coitcheanta muinntir na Gaeltachd. Duneidin; clo-bhuailte le Tearlach Stiubhart. 1818.” 8vo., pp. 344.