The poems of Ossian, &c. containing the poetical works of James Macpherson, Esq. in prose and rhyme

First of 2 volumes in 8vo. pp. lxix, [3], 379. Half calf. “Coul, 1805” inscribed on title pages.

James Macpherson (1736-1796), was in literary and cultural terms perhaps the most influential of all forgers. Repeatedly encouraged by the Edinburgh literati, though professedly reluctant to continue his researches into Gaelic literary remains in remote Highland and Hebridean outposts, Macpherson soon came up with an astonishingly extensive find: a 19,000-word epic by ‘Ossian,’ a blind bard of third-century Argyllshire, recounting the fading glory of his warrior-brethren among the Highland clans.

The present work is the definitive ‘parallel passages’ exposure of the Ossian poems by the distinguished Edinburgh advocate Malcolm Laing (1762-1818), in which he traces virtually every line to precedents in one of eighty-eight authors. Five years before, In A History of Scotland (see Bib# 4103346/Fr# 643), he had devoted a merciless appendix to ‘A dissertation on the supposed authenticity of Ossian’s poems’, itemizing some one hundred sources, ancient and modern, employed by Macpherson in ‘assembling’ his epics.

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