In 1760, Macpherson published those "Fragments of Ancient Poetry, collected in the Highlands of Scotland, and translated from the Gaelic or Erse language," which, afterwards enlarged, became the celebrated "Ossian's Poems." Hume took an early interest in this professed resuscitation of early national literature. He at first doubted the truth of assertions so unprecedented in literary history, as those by which the genuineness of the poems was maintained. But there was nothing to which his heart would have responded with a warmer enthusiasm than the discovery, that his ancestors, generally reputed to be but late accessions to civilization, could look back upon a literature as rich and great as that which had crowned Greece with the literary supremacy of the world. Hence, he seems to have, after some time, willingly yielded to a belief in the genuineness of these poems. His good sense and sceptical spirit, however, resumed the supremacy, and he afterwards wrote a very searching though short "Essay on the Authenticity of Ossian's Poems." It is printed in the Appendix; and thither the whole correspondence on the subject is transferred, that the reader may peruse the various pieces in a series. It is probable that the sole reason why Hume never published this detection, was a kindly feeling to his friend Dr. Blair, against whom he might not wish to appear in a controversy, where the critical powers of the latter would be so severely tested. And yet they stood on perfectly fair ground. Neither Hume nor Blair had any knowledge of the archæological merits of the question. Each of them discussed the probable genuineness of the poems on grounds as purely critical as if they had been brought from Central Africa, instead of being the alleged literature of a people who are supposed to have at one time occupied the ground on which Edinburgh is built; and at the time of that controversy, as at the present day, might be visited on a journey of fifty miles. In such a state of knowledge, it required great freedom and decision in criticism to pronounce the poems forgeries. Then, as now, every genuine Celt protested that he had heard them over and over again in Gaelic with his own ears; and with this only difference from the translation, that there were peculiar delicate beauties in the native Gaelic, which neither Macpherson, nor any other man, was capable of expressing in English. In such an unequal controversy, between the internal evidence of criticism, and the external evidence of broad assertion, it is singular that no one should have attempted to solve the question through the faint light which the chronicles of the surrounding tribes throw on the history of the Celts in Scotland. That knowledge has now been pretty widely extended; and hence "Ossian's Poems" have been estimated at their true value, as an embossment of poetical language and imagery, on the surface of such barren metrical narratives as all uncivilized and warlike people possess; it has been found that the structure of the narratives, the characteristic names, the events of history, and the manners of the times, have been treated with no more deference, when an alteration was found to suit the purpose of the "translator."[87:1]