Other critics have pointed out a similar indistinctness in the human actors, no less than in the landscape features of “Fingal” and “Temora.”  They have no dramatic individuality, but are all alike, and all extremely shadowy.  “Poor, moaning, monotonous MacPherson” is Carlyle’s alliterative description of the translator of “Ossian”; and it must be confessed that, in spite of the deep poetic feeling which pervades these writings, and the undeniable beauty of single passages, they have damnable iteration.  The burden of their song is a burden in every sense.  Mr. Malcolm Laing, one of MacPherson’s most persistent adversaries, who published “Notes and Illustrations to Ossian” in 1805, essayed to show, by a minute analysis of the language, that the whole thing was a fabrication, made up from Homer, Milton, the English Bible, and other sources.  Thus he compared MacPherson’s “Like the darkened moon when she moves, a dim circle, through heaven, and dreadful change is expected by men,” with Milton’s

                “Or from behind the moon,
    In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds
    On half the nations, and with fear of change
    Perplexes monarchs.”

Laing’s method proves too much and might be applied with like results to almost any literary work.  And, in general, it is hazardous to draw hard and fast conclusions from internal evidence of the sort just reviewed.  Taken altogether, these objections do leave a strong bias upon the mind, and were one to pronounce upon the genuineness of MacPherson’s “Ossian,” as a whole, from impressions of tone and style, it might be guessed that whatever element of true ancient poetry it contains, it had been thoroughly steeped in modern sentiment before it was put before the public.  But remembering Beowulf and the Norse mythology, one might hesitate to say that the songs of primitive, heroic ages are always insensible to the sublime in nature; or to admit that melancholy is a Celtic monopoly.

The most damaging feature of MacPherson’s case was his refusal or neglect to produce his originals.  The testimony of those who helped him in collecting and translating leaves little doubt that he had materials of some kind; and that these consisted partly of old Gaelic manuscripts, and partly of transcriptions taken down in Gaelic from the recitation of aged persons in the Highlands.  These testimonies may be read in the “Report of the Committee of the Highland Society,” Edinburgh, 1805.[13] It is too voluminous to examine here, and it leaves unsettled the point as to the precise use which MacPherson made of his materials, whether, i.e., he gave literal renderings of them, as he professed to do; or whether he manipulated them—­and to what extent—­by piecing fragments together, lopping, dove-tailing, smoothing, interpolating, modernizing, as Percy did with his ballads.  He was challenged to show his Gaelic manuscripts, and Mr. Clerk says that he accepted the challenge.  “He deposited the manuscripts at his publishers’, Beckett and De Hondt, Strand, London.  He advertised in the newspapers that he had done so; offered to publish them if a sufficient number of subscribers came forward; and in the Literary Journal of the year 1784, Beckett certifies that the manuscripts had lain in his shop for the space of a whole year."[14]