264 LETTERS FROM THE MOUNTAINS. common people here are so gross, so sordid, they neither love nor esteem their superiors. And how should they, when these last regard them with such scornful indifference? The middle rank, that most valuable and happiest link in the chain of society, which superadds the polish of the upper, in some degree, to the strength of the lower, and was wont to connect and strengthen both; that class of society where, I might say with the Psalmist, "all my delights are placed," has here, I think, ceased to exist. I have my children, and they are worthy of my love, but necessarily more each other's companions than mine. I feel this desideratum, more for their sake than my own. I ought to be pleased, and shall, I hope, be tranquil; but not yet. Do not tire of this querulous length of letter, for it has done me much good to tell you all this, and to think how sorry you will be. You are too happy and too lazy to visit me here; and yet you have done many idler things, and I should be so thankful to see you. With love to all your dear fireside, believe that I shall always be much yours, ANNE GRANT. APPENDIX. ESSAY ON THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE POEMS OF OSSIAN. BY MRS. GRANT OF LAGGAN. [The following Essay, which was appended to the Volume of Poems published by Mrs. Grant in 1803, having been frequently referred to in the concluding Letters of the foregoing Series, and containing some interesting facts respecting Mr. Macpherson's journey to the Hebrides in search of materials for his Translation of Ossian's Poems, is here inserted by the Editor for the benefit of such readers as may desire to peruse the Essay, and have not an opportunity of referring to the volume in which it was originally published.-ED.] The time is fast approaching when it will be impossible to throw new light on the question respecting the authenticity of those celebrated productions of the Celtic Muse. The most conclusive evidence which the nature of the subject will admit of is fast fading away. It consists of traditions co-relative to the Poems, a kind of poetical phraseology derived from them, and a resembling strain of sentiment in other compositions of great, though not equal antiquity, which no one could ever have had any motive to falsify or alter. There is another clear, though now decaying evidence. Old people can very well remember, before Mr. Mac pherson ever thought of translating those remains, when many comparisons and allusions, to be found in them, were as correct as scriptural quotations in the last age among the peasants of the west of Scotland. "She is as beautiful as Agandecca, the daughter of the Snow,"-" She is musical as Malvina,"-" He is as forlorn as Ossian after the departure of the Fingalians," -"Such a one is as alert and nimble as Cuchullin," were phrases in common use. Whatever embellishments, or whatever anachronisms the injudicious vanity of a translator may have grafted on these Poems, no person who lived in the country of their reputed author ever doubted their existence or antiquity. There every stream and mountain, every tale, song, or adage retained some traces of the generous hero or the mournful bard. But there was little chance of getting at the truth of this question, while the contention lay betwixt learned people, on the one hand, and national vanity on the other. The former were accustomed to consider letters, not as the vehicle, but the essence of knowledge; accounting all unlearned people utterly savage and barbarous, and unable to conceive how any one could entertain noble or generous sentiments without deriving them from classical models. The latter was unwilling to confess how little the Gaelic language had been used in writing, and to what a narrow district of the kingdom it had been, even in remote ages, confined,-which was the real cause why no connected series of these Poems had been written down, and why they had been so long hid in obscurity. To the same motive may be attributed the silent acquiescence of the Highlanders in the alterations and embellish |