Noblest of kings, Finn ne’er refused To any man, howe’er unknown; Ne’er from his house sent those who came. Good man was Finn, good man was he; No gifts e’er given like his so free. ’Twas yesterday week. This is a specimen of a peculiar kind of ancient Celtic poetry. It was usually sung to music, and has a remarkable resemblance to some of the hymns of the early Latin Church. There is another composition of the same kind in praise of Gaul, called usually “Rosg Ghuill,” or the War-Song of Gaul. It is unnecessary to give further specimens of these remains of the ancient heroic poetry of the Highlands here, nor is it necessary to quote any of the more modern compositions with which the Dean of Lismore’s MS. abounds. It is enough to remark how great an amount of poetry was composed in the Highlands in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. That was indeed an age of bards when poetical genius was amply rewarded by great and liberal chiefs. It is of interest further to observe how ample the answer furnished by the Lismore MS. is to the ill-natured remarks of Dr Johnson, who maintained that there was not a word of written Gaelic in the Highlands more than a hundred years old. We shall now dismiss the Dean’s MS., but we shall exhaust the subject of Ossian’s poems by a cursory view of the other and later collections of those poems, and especially the collection of Macpherson. MACPHERSON’S OSSIAN. It is quite unnecessary here to enter on the question of the authenticity of the poems of Ossian, as edited by Macpherson.[103] The subject has been so largely treated in numerous publications, that we consider it better to give a short historical sketch of the publication, with such specimens as may serve to show the character of the work.