the Highland Society of London, I gave up the pursuit of Gaelic poetry; about which I became so careless that I never took the trouble of transcribing or preserving several pieces that had fallen into my possession.” Smith is not the only one to whom the “pursuit of Gaelic poetry” and Celtic studies became a painful and barren enterprise. It appears that Duncan Kennedy, a schoolmaster at Lochgilphead, busied himself in collecting, transcribing, and editing in his own peculiar manner all the old Highland lays he could find in Argyllshire, and that some of his materials found their way into Smith’s possession. It is understood that the latter refers to Kennedy in the following sentences: “(1802), I remember well,”—Kennedy was still alive,—“that a man who had given me the use of a parcel of poems, without any restriction, had long threatened a prosecution for publishing what he called translations of his collection of poems, and alleged he had a claim to a share of the profits. I believe, however, upon enquiry, that he understood the profits were only a serious loss, as I had been persuaded to run shares with a bookseller in the publication, which to me turned out so bad a concern (when my income was but thirty pounds a-year), that I could never since think of Gaelic poetry with pleasure or with patience, except to wish it had been dead before I was born.” In this same letter Smith declares that a little while before he had used the last copy he had of his Translations “in papering a dark closet that had not been lathed, in order to derive some small benefit from what had cost” him so much. Macpherson reaped the first crop of the ancient lays of the Celtic world of romance; piled a fortune out of it; became a member of Parliament; bought a Highland estate on which he erected a monument for himself; and arranged for the burial of his body in Westminster Abbey. Some of his imitators found the path of Celtic studies and poetry one of thorns, poverty and misfortune, and obscure graves, without a cairn to mark their resting-place. Smith’s Collection of Ancient Poems appeared in 1780, subjoined to the Dissertations on Gaelic Antiquities. These poems were translations, it was declared, “from the Gaelic of Ossian, Ullin, Orran, and others;” and in 1787 he published the originals of these poems, the number being fourteen. Their titles are: _The Lay of the Red_; _The Death of Gaul_; _The Lay of Duhona_; _Diarmid_; _Clan-Morni_, or _Finan and Lorma_, from which following lines are taken to show the character of the verse and mode of thought:— CAOIDH MHUIRNE AIRSON A CHLAINNE. Och! ’s truaigh mi féin a chlann, ’N ’ur déigh gu fann aosmhor; Mar dharaig sheargte mi air aonach, Ris nach pill gu bràth a caoinchruth. Tha’n dùlach dorcha anns a’ ghleann, ’S gach crann air raoin gun duilleach; Ach pillidh ’sa’ cheitein am maise, Ged nach faicear mo sgèimh-sa tuille.