Smith borrowed a great proportion of his collection from Mr Kennedy's manuscripts, such, at least, as they were prior to 1785, when, as in their last stage, they were, no doubt, filled with much of his own spurious verse. It is also not improbable, were we warranted to judge from Dr Smith's translations, that he may have been led to determine hastily, concerning the merits of some of the poems which he has published; and, regulating our opinion by the same criterion, it seems almost certain, that he has seldom employed the same labour, and judgment, and taste, in arranging his editions of these poems, as Mr Macpherson appears almost always to have done. Be this as it may, it is undeniable, that though there are fragments, of the greatest beauty and elegance, to be met with, occasionally, in this collection, the poems are, upon the whole, of such unequal merit; and the incongruous shreds of ancient and mo dern composition are so clumsily patched together, that no person can, with patience, peruse any one of them from the beginning to the end. it may Considering the great merit of many passages in the Seandana, and no doubt, too, of some passages in Mr Kennedy's manuscripts, be permitted to remark, by the way, that it were worth while to purge the volume of the interpolations of modern fabricators, and to preserve only what appears, on good grounds, to be unquestionably ancient. Nor would this be a very difficult task. Mr Kennedy has already given a pretty sufficient key to what he claims as his; and it would not be difficult, with the exercise of a little critical acumen, (could one resolve to wade through this volume,) to asshare. sign to every other modern his proper It is true, the volume would be reduced, by this refining process, by more than one-half of its contents; but the remainder, accom panied by a faithful translation, would be found to be of sterling value. Thus we are enabled, in some degree, to form an estimate of the part which has been taken by the only collectors of Gaelic poetry, besides Mr Macpherson, whose names have obtained any celebrity in this question. What Mr Kennedy claims, so far as the justice of his claims can be ascertained, is, compared with what Mr Macpherson has produced, the very bathos of Gaelic poetry. Dr Smith's volume, notwithstanding many exquisite reliques of ancient poetry, which it undoubtedly contains, is, from some cause or other, nearly intolerable. And now, with regard to Mr Macpherson, the most respectable evidence can be adduced of his comparative ignorance of the Gaelic lan † One of these causes we are enabled to ascertain,---his hasty adoption of the materials of Mr Kennedy's manuscripts. guage. In his knowledge of the idiom of this tongue, he appears to have been far inferior to Dr Smith, and even to Mr Kennedy, the author of Carril; and yet we have, through the hands of Mr Macpherson, besides some smaller fragments of Gaelic poetry, the whole of the Seventh Book of Temora (as he has chosen to denominate that poem) in the original, consisting of four hundred and twenty-three lines, in a style of classical chasteness, of elegant and harmonious versification, and of sublime sentiment and imagery, which boldly challenges the keenest eye of criticism. This precious fragment of Ossianic verse, whilst it may be truly considered as inferior only to a book of the Iliad or Odyssey, is, in our present circumstances, with regard to the originals, almost the only portion of this ancient poetry which is a fair object of critical investigation. To develope this part of the argument, so important in the present question, and to |