combustion in the Literary World.

So if you have any mind to combustle about it well and good; for me, I am neither so literary nor so combustible*. The Monthly Review, I see, just now has much stuff about us on this occasion. It says one of us at least has always borne his faculties 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.

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 tell 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

* Had Mr. Pope disregarded the sarcasms of the many writers that endeavoured to eclipse his poetical fame, as much as Mr. Gray here appears to have done, the world would not have been possessed of a Dunciad; but it would have been impressed with a more amiable idea of its author's temper. It is for the sake of shewing how Mr. Gray felt on such occasions, that I publish this letter.— Mason.

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. 355.--Mason.

1

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 enquiries, 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,

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"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 Major Mackay (Lord Rae's brother) "told me that he remembers them perfectly well; as likewise "did the Laird of 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

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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,

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166

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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 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.

་

LETTER XCII.

M GRAY TO D WHARTON.

London, October 21, 1760.

DEAR DOCTOR,

I will not come till you much to see you. I hear

DON'T be afraid of me. tell me I may; though I long very you have let your hair grow, and visit none of your neighbouring

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.

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 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 201. 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. Humé, 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,

* Park Place, the seat of the Honourable Henry Seymour Conway, the friend and correspondent of Walpole.-Ed.

and other illiterate persons in various and distant parts of the Hi a ds. There is a sub cription for Mr. Macpherson, which will enable him to undertake a mission undertake a mission among the Mountaineers, and pick up all the scattered remnants of old Poetry. He is certainly an admirable judge; if his learned friends do not pervert or overrule his taste.

}

Mason is here in town, but so dissipated with his duties at Sion-Hill, or his attention to the Beaux-Arts, that I see but little of him. The last Spring (for the first time) there was an Exhibition in a public room of Pictures, Sculptures, Engravings, &c. sent in by all the Artists, in imitation of what has been long practised in Paris. Among the rest there is a Mr. Sandby, who exults in Landscape, with Figures, Views of Buildings, Ruins, &c. and has been much employed by the Duke, Lord Harcourt, Lord Scarborough, and others. Hitherto he has dealt in wash'd drawings and water-colours, but has of late only practised in oil. He (and Mason together) have cooked,up a great picture of Mount Snowdon, in which the Bard and Edward the First make their appearance; and this is to be his Exhibition-Picture for next year, but (till then) it is a sort of

secret.

The great Expedition* takes up every body's thoughts. There is such a train of artillery on board, as never was seen before during this war. Some talk of Brest, others of Rochfort, if the wind (which is very high) does not blow it away. I do believe it will succeed, for the French seem in a miserable way.

*The strong Armament destined for a secret-Expedition was collected at Portsmouth; but after being detained there the whole Summer, the design was laid aside. See Smollett's History of England, Vol. 5, p. 230.-Ed.