“And yet,” said the priest, having patiently heard me out--“Mr. Macpherson confesses that the ancient language and traditional history of the Scottish nation became confined to the natives of the Highlands, who falling, from several concurring circumstances, into the last degree of ignorance and barbarism, left the Scots so destitute of historic facts, that they were reduced to the necessity of sending Fordun to Ireland for their history, from whence he took the entire first part of his book. For Ireland, owing to its being colonized from Phoenicia, and consequent early introduction of letters there, was at that period esteemed the most enlightened country in Europe: and indeed Mr. Macpherson himself avers, that the Irish, for ages antecedent to the Conquest, possessed a competent share of that kind of learning which prevailed in Europe; and from their superiority over the Scots, found no difficulty in imposing on the ignorant Highland seanachies, and establishing that historic system which afterwards, for want of any other, was universally received. “Now, my dear friend, if historic fact and tradition did not attest the poems of Ossian to be Irish, probability would establish it. For if the Scotch were obliged to Ireland, according to Mr. Macpherson’s own account, not only for their history but their tradition, so remote a one as Ossian must have come from the Irish; for Scotland, as Dr. Johnson asserts, when he called on Mr. Macpherson to show his originals, had not an Erse manuscript two hundred years old. And Sir George M’Kenzie, though himself a Scotchman, declares, “that he had in his possession, an Irish manuscript written by Cairbre Lifteachair, * monarch of Ireland, who flourished before St Patrick’s mission. * Mr O’Halloran, in his Introduction to the study of Irish History, &c.. quotes some lines from a poem still extant, composed by Torna Ligis, chief poet to Niai the Great, who flourished in the fourth century. “But,” said I, “even granting these beautiful poems to be the effusions of Irish genius, it is strange that the feats of your own heroes could not supply your bards with subjects for their epic verse.” “Strange indeed it would have been,” said the priest, “and therefore they have chosen the most renowned chiefs in their annals of national heroism, as their Achilleses, their Hectors, and Agamemnons.” “How!” exclaimed I, “Is not Fingal a Caledonian chief? Is he not expressly called King of Morven?” “Allowing he were in the originals, which he is not,” returned the priest, “give me leave to ask you where Morven lies?” “Why, I suppose of course in Scotland,” said I, a little unprepared for the question.