idioms; teach him Latin, or English, orFrench, from that moment his native tongue becomes contaminated, by what a genuine Highlander would account barbarisms; he no longer retains the pure idiom of the Gaelic, he unavoidably mixes it with the idioms of the foreign language which he has acquired.

By those who are not acquainted with some original language unadulterated by foreign idioms, it will not, perhaps, be easily understood, that the purity, with which the Gaelic is spoken by any person, is directly as his want of acquaintance with every other language. An unlettered Highlander will feel and detect a violation of the idiom of his language more readily than his countryman, who has read Homer and Virgil.

A ludicrous instance, which will serve to illustrate this view of the subject, is recorded in the Appendix to the Committee's Report, (p. 95.) in the declaration of Ewan Mac

pherson, a schoolmaster of Badenoch, who accompanied Mr James Macpherson in his researches through the Hebrides, and appears to have performed most of the drudgery of collecting and writing down the recitations of Gaelic poetry which they met with:"On their way," says he, "to the seat of "the younger Clanranald, they fell in with "a man, whom they afterwards ascertained "to have been Mac Codrum, the poet. Mr

Macpherson asked him the question, 'Am "bheil dad agad air an Fhèine?' by which "he meant to enquire, Whether or not he "knew any of the Poems of Ossian, relative "to the Fingallians? but the terms in which "the question was asked, strictly import

ed, Whether or not the Fingallians owed "him any thing? and Mac Codrum, being "a man of humour, took advantage of the "incorrectness, or inelegance, of the Gaelic, "in which the question was put, and an"swered, That really, if they had owed

"him any thing, the bonds and obligations

were now lost; and he believed any at

tempt to recover them, at that time of day, would be unavailing.' Which sally "of Mac Codrum's wit seemed to have hurt Macpherson, who cut short the conversa❝tion."

Of Mr Macpherson's comparatively slight knowledge of the Gaelic language, other proofs will be brought in their proper place; but even the above may lead to a suspicion, that, however well he could write in English prose, he was unqualified to write ten verses of Gaelic poetry, in the style of the specimens furnished by himself. Indeed, when we speak of purity of language and idiom, it seems certain, that, if we could suppose a learned modern, placed in the Forum of ancient Rome, to address, in Latin, those very audiences which had listened to Cicero, he could imitate the style of that celebrated orator, with more ease and suc

cess than it is possible for a Highlander, versed as Mr Macpherson was, in the ancient and modern languages of Europe, to approach the genuine idiom of the Gaelic. Of this genuine idiom, we have beautiful examples in the seventh book of Temora, published, at an early period, by Mr Macpherson himself; and, in some of the purer fragments of Gaelic poetry, given by Dr Smith. These poems bear, throughout, the stamp of antiquity. Some foreign, and even some modern terms sometimes occur, of the introduction of which, I shall afterwards, as I hope, be able to give a satisfactory account. But still the Gaelic idiom is maintained, and the purity of its structure preserved inviolate.

SECTION IV.

Of particular Terms and Expressions which occur in these Poems, and which Mr Laing argues to have been borrowed from other Languages.—The Opinion of Mr Pinkerton and of the Edinburgh Reviewers examined, with regard to the Gallic Invaders of the Italian Territory.—The Copiousness of the Gaelic, in Expressions, to denote the Appearances of external Nature, and the Feelings and Passions of the human Mind.-Estimate of Mr Laing's alleged Instances of borrowed Expressions.

THE language, in which any work is written, and the particular expressions and allusions that may occur in it, undoubtedly afford a very obvious criterion of the period and state of society to which it is to be referred. But, in order to be qualified to appreciate this