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valuable than Fingal, is the light it throws on the hiftory of the times. The first population of Ireland, its firft kings, and feveral circumstances, which regard its connection of old with the fouth and north of Britain are prefented to us, in feveral episodes. The fubject and catastrophe of the poem are founded upon facts, which regarded the first peopling of that country, and the contefts between the two British nations, which originally inhabited it. In a preceding part of this differtation, I have shewn how fupe rior the probability of Offian's traditions is to the undigested fictions of the Irish bards and the more recent and regular legends of both Irish and Scottish hiftorians. I mean not to give offence to the abettors of the high antiquities of the two nations, though I have all along expreffed my doubts, concerning the veracity and abilities of those who deliver down their antient hiftory. For my own part, I prefer the national fame, arifing from a few certain facts, to the legendary and uncertain annals of ages of remote and obfcure antiquity. No kingdom now eftablished in Europe can pretend to equal antiquity with that of the Scots, even according to my fyftem, fo that it is altogether needlefs to fix their origin a fictitious millennium before.

Since the publication of the poems contain ed in the first volume, many infinuations have

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been made, and doubts arifen, concerning their authenticity. I shall, probably, hear more of the fame kind after the prefent poems shall make their appearance. Whether thefe fufpicions are fuggefted by prejudice, or are only the effects of ignorance of facts, I shall not pretend to determine. To me they give no concern, as I have it always in my power to remove them. An incredulity of this kind is natural to perfons, who confine all merit to their own age and country. These are generally the weakeft, as well as the most ignorant, of the people. Indolently confined to a place, their ideas are narrow and circumfcribed. It is ridiculous enough to fee fuch people as thefe are, branding their ancestors, with the defpicable appellation of barbarians. Sober reafon can easily discern where the title ought to be fixed with more propriety.

As prejudice is always the effect of ignorance, the knowing, the men of true tafte defpife and difmifs it. If the poetry is good, and the characters natural and striking, to them it is a matter of indifference, whether the heroes were born in the little village of Angles in Juteland, or natives of the barren heaths of Caledonia. That honour which nations derive from ancestors, worthy, or renowned, is merely ideal. It may buoy up the minds of individuals, but it contributes very

little to their importance in the eyes of others. -But of all those prejudices which are incident to narrow minds, that which measures the merit of performances by the vulgar opinion, concerning the country which produced them, is certainly the most ridiculous. Ridiculous, however, as it is, few have the courage to reject it; and, I am thoroughly convinced, that a few quaint lines of a Roman or Greek epigrammatift, if dug out of the ruins of Herculaneum, would meet with more cordial and universal applause, than all the most beautiful and natural rhapsodies of all the Celtic bards and Scandinavian Scalders that ever exifted.

While fome doubt the authenticity of the compofitions of Offian, others ftrenuously endeavour to appropriate them to the Irish nation. Though the whole tenor of the poems fufficiently contradict fo abfurd an opinion it may not be improper, for the fatisfaction of fome, to examine the narrow foundation, on which this extraordinary claim is built.

Of all the nations defcended from the antient Celta, the Scots and Irish are the moft fimilar in language, customs, and manners. This argues a more intimate connection between them, than a remote defcent from the great Celtic ftock. It is evident, in short, that, at fome one period or other, they

formed one fociety, were fubject to the fame government, and were, in all refpects, one and the fame people. How they became divided, which the colony, or which the mother nation, does not fall now to be difcuffed. The firft circumftance that induced me to difregard the vulgarly-received opinion of the Hibernian extraction of the Scottish nation, was my obfervations on their antient language. That dialect of the Celtic tongue, fpoken in the north of Scotland, is much more pure, more agreeable to its mother language, and more abounding with primitives, than that now spoken, or even that which has been writ for fome centuries back, amongst the most unmixed part of the Irish nation. A Scotchman, tolerably converfant in his own language, understands an Irish compofition, from that derivative analogy which it has to the Galic of NorthBritain. An Irishman, on the other hand, without the aid of ftudy, can never underftand a compofition in the Galic tongue.-This affords a proof, that the Scotch Galic is the most original, and, confequently, the language of a more antient and unmixed people. The Irish, however backward they may be to allow any thing to the prejudice of their antiquity, feem inadvertently to acknowledge it, by the very appellation they give to the dialect they fpeak.-They call their own language Caëlic Eirinach, i. e.

Caledonian Irish, when, on the contrary, they call the dialect of North-Britain a Caëlic or the Caledonian tongue, emphatically. A circumstance of this nature tends more to decide which is the most antient nation, than the united teftimonies of a whole legion of ignorant bards and fenachies, who, perhaps, never dreamed of bringing the Scots from Spain to Ireland, till fome one of them more learned than the reft, discovered, that the Romans called the firft Iberia, and the latter Hibernia. On fuch a flight foundation were probably built thofe romantic fictions concerning the Milesians of Ireland.

From internal proofs it fufficiently appears, that the poems published under the name of Offian, are not of Irish compofition. The favourite chimæra that Ireland is the mother-country of the Scots, is totally fubverted and ruined. The fictions concerning the antiquities of that country, which were forming for ages, and growing as they came down, on the hands of fucceffive fenachies and fileas, are found, at laft, to be the fpurious brood of modern and ignorant ages. To those who know how tenacious the Irish are, of their pretended Iberian defcent, this alone is proof fufficient, that poems, fo fubverfive of their fyftem could never be produced by an Hibernian bard. But when we look to the language,