meekly. I leave you to guess which of us that is; I think I know. You simpleton you! you must be meek, must you? and see what you get by it. I do not like your improvements at Aston, it looks so like settling; if I come I will set fire to it. I will never believe the B** s and the C** s are dead, though I smelt them; that sort of people always live to a good old age. I dare swear they are only gone to Ireland, and we shall soon hear they are bishops. tell The Erse Fragments have been published five weeks ago in Scotland, though I had them not (by a mistake) till the other day. As you tell me new things do not reach you soon at Aston, I inclose what I can; the rest shall follow, when you me whether you have not got the pamphlet already. I send the two to Mr. Wood which I had before, because he has not the affectation of not admiring.* I have another from Mr. Macpherson, which he has not printed; it is mere description, but excellent too in its kind. If you are good and will learn to admire, I will transcribe and send it. As to their authenticity, I have made many en * It was rather a want of credulity than admiration that Mr. Gray should have laid to my charge. I suspected that, whether the Fragments were genuine or not, they were by no means literally translated. I suspect so still; and a former note gives a sufficient cause for that suspicion. See p. 245.-Mason. quiries, and have lately procured a letter* from Mr. David Hume (the historian), which is more satisfactory than any thing I have yet met with on that subject. He says, "Certain it is that these poems are in every body's mouth in the Highlands, have been handed down from father to son, and are of an age beyond all memory and tradition. Adam Smith, the celebrated Professor in Glasgow, told me, that the Piper of the Argyleshire Militia repeated to him all those which Mr. Macpherson had translated, and many more of equal beauty. Major Mackay (Lord Rae's brother) told me that he remembers them perfectly well; as likewise did the Laird of * This letter is printed entire in the European Magazine, vol. v. p. 327, March, 1784; it concludes in this manner : It gives me pleasure to find that a person of so fine a taste as Mr. Gray approves of these fragments, as it may convince us that our fondness of them is not altogether founded on national prepossession, which, however, you know to be a little strong, the translation is elegant, but I made an objection to the author, which I wish you would communicate to Mr. Gray, that we may judge of the justness of it, there appeared to me many verses in his prose, and all of them of the same measure with Mr. Shenstone's famous ballad : 'Ye shepherds so careless and free, Pray ask Mr. Gray whether he made the same remark, and whether he thinks it a blemish." It appears from this letter, that Macpherson first shewed the copies of these MSS. to John Home, the Poet, at Moffat, in the autumn of 1759, and that he translated them at Mr. Home's request. Macfarline (the greatest antiquarian we have in this country), and who insists strongly on the historical truth, as well as the poetical beauty of these productions. I could add the Laird and Lady Macleod, with many more, that live in different parts of the Highlands, very remote from each other, and could only be acquainted with what had become (in a manner) national works.* There is a country surgeon in Lochaber, who has by heart the entire Epic Poem mentioned by Mr. Macpherson in his preface; and, as he is old, is perhaps the only person living that knows it all, and has never committed it to writing, we are in the more haste to recover a monument, which will certainly be regarded as a curiosity in the Republic of Letters: we have, therefore, set about a subscription * All this external evidence, and much more, has since been collected and published by Dr. Blair (see his Appendix to his Critical Dissertation on the Works of Ossian); and yet notwithstanding a later Irish writer has been hardy enough to assert, that the Poems in question abound with the strangest anachronisms: for instance, that Cucullin lived in the first, and Fingal in the third century; two princes who are said to have made war with the Danes, a nation never heard of in Europe till the ninth; which war could not possibly have happened till 500 years after the death of the supposed poet who sings it. (See O'Halloran's Introduction to the Study of the History and Antiquities of Ireland, quarto, 1772.) To whatever side of the question truth may lean, it is of little moment to me; my doubts arising (as I have said in the former note) from internal evidence only, and a want of proof of the fidelity of the translation.-Mason. of a guinea or two guineas apiece, in order to enable Mr. Macpherson to undertake a mission into the Highlands to recover this poem, and other fragments of antiquity." He adds too, that the names of Fingal, Ossian, Oscar, &c.* are still given in the Highlands to large mastiffs, as we give to ours the names of Cæsar, Pompey, Hector, &c. C. MR. GRAY TO DR. WHARTON. DEAR DOCTOR, DON'T be afraid of me. London, October 21, 1760. I will not come till you tell me I may; though I long very much to see you. I hear you have let your hair grow, and visit none of your neighbouring gentry; two (I should think) capital crimes in that county, and indeed in all counties. I hear too (and rejoice) that you have recovered your hearing. I have nothing equally important to tell you of myself, but that I have not had the gout since I saw you; yet don't let me brag, the winter is but just begun. I have passed a part of the summer on a charming hill near Henley,† with the Thames running * In the original letter the names are thus given, Fingal, Oscur, Osur, Oscan, Dermid. + Park Place, the seat of the Honourable Henry Seymour Conway, the friend and correspondent of Walpole.— Ed. at my feet, but in the company of a pack of women, that wore my spirits, though not their own. The rest of the season I was at Cambridge in a duller and more congenial situation. Did I tell you that our friend Chapman, a week before he died, eat five huge mackerel (fat and full of roe) at one dinner, which produced an indigestion; but on Trinity Sunday he finished himself with the best part of a large turbot, which he carried to his grave, poor man! he never held up his head after. From Cambridge I am come hither, yet am going into Kent for a fortnight or so. You astonish me in wondering that my Lady Cobham left me nothing. For my part, I wondered to find she had given me £20. for a ring, as much as she gave to several of her own nieces. The world said, before her death, that Mrs. Speed and I had shut ourselves up with her in order to make her will, and that afterwards we were to be married. There is a second edition of the Scotch Fragments, yet very few admire them, and almost all take them for fictions. I have a letter from D. Hume, the historian, that asserts them to be genuine, and cites the names of several people (that know both languages) who have heard them current in the mouths of pipers, and other illiterate persons in various and distant parts of the Highlands. There is a subscription for Mr. Macpherson, which will enable him to undertake a mission among the Mountaineers, and pick up all the scattered rem |