guage of their ancestors, lost, together with it, their national traditions, received implicitly, the history of their country from Irish refugees, or from Highland senachies, persuaded over into the Hibernian system. These circumstances are far from being ideal. We have remaining many particular traditions, which bear testimony to a fact, of itself abundantly probable. What makes the matter incontestible is, that the ancient traditional accounts of the genuine origin of the Scots, have been handed down without interruption. Though a few ignorant senachies might be persuaded out of their own opinion, by the smoothness of an Irish tale, it was impossible to eradicate, from among the bulk of the people, their own national traditions. These traditions afterwards so much prevailed, that the Highlanders continue totally unacquainted with the pretended Hibernian extract of the Scotch nation. Ignorant chronicle writers, strangers to the ancient language of their country, preserved only from falling to the ground so improbable a story. This subject, perhaps, is pursued further than it deserves; but a discussion of the pretensions of Ireland, was become in some mea*sure necessary. If the Irish poems, concerning the Fiona, should appear ridiculous, it is but justice to observe, that they are scarcely more so than the poems of other nations at that period. On other subjects, the bards of Ireland have displayed a genius for poetry. It was alone, in matters of antiquity, that they were monstrous in their fables. Their lovesonnets, and their elegies on the death of persons worthy or renowned, abound with simplicity, and a wild harmony of numbers. They become more than an atonement for their errors in every other species of poetry. But the beauty of these species depends so much on a certain curioso felicitas of expression in the original, that they must appear much to disadvantage in another language. A CRITICAL DISSERTATION ON THE POEMS OF OSSIAN, THE SON OF FINGAL. BY HUGH BLAIR, D.D. ONE OF THE MINISTERS OF THE HIGH CHURCH, AND PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND BELLES-LETTRES IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH. A CRITICAL DISSERTATION ON THE POEMS OF OSSIAN, THE SON OF FINGAL. AMONG the monuments remaining of the ancient state of nations, few are more valuable than their poems or songs. History, when it treats of remote and dark ages, is seldom very instructive. The beginnings of society, in every country, are involved in fabulous confusion; and though they were not, they would furnish few events worth recording. But, in every period of society, human manners are a curious spectacle; and the most natural pictures of ancient manners are exhibited in the ancient poems of nations. These present to us, what is much more valuable than the history of such transactions as a rude age can |