SOURCE: "Dissertation," in The Poems of Ossian, William Blackwood and Sons, 1870, pp. i-xlvi.

In the following excerpt, Clerk offers a detailed defense of Ossian's authenticity and antiquity, discussing both internal and external "evidence."

It has often been brought as a reproach against the Galel that any knowledge of Gaelic literature possessed by the world is due to the labour of strangers; that the people themselves were indifferent to the subject. And it must be admitted that the reproach is in a great degree deserved. I am glad, however, to be able to show that the first known proposal to make the English public acquainted with the poetical treasures long buried in the obscurity of the Gaelic language, was made by a genuine Celt.

Alexander M'Donald, well known to his countrymen as perhaps the ablest of their modern poets, published in 1751 a volume of original Gaelic songs; and in...