acquired, deterred and dissuaded him, if he had ever any such
intention, until the opportunity was past.

MacPherson feared English public opinion, and fearing lied. He
declared that to be a translation which was original work, thus
relegating himself for ever to a dubious renown, and depriving his
country of the honest fame of having preserved through centuries,
by mere oral transmission, a portion, at least, of the antique
Irish literature. To the magnanimity of his own heroes he could not
attain:--

"Oscar, Oscar, who feared not armies--
Oscar, who never lied."

Of some such error as MacPherson's I have myself, with less excuse,
been guilty, in chapters xi. and xii., Vol. I., where I attempt to
give some conception of the character of the Ossianic cycle. The
age and the heroes around whom that cycle revolves have, in the
history of Ireland, a definite position in time; their battles,
characters, several achievements, relationships, and pedigrees;
their Duns, and trysting-places, and tombs; their wives, musicians,
and bards; their tributes, and sufferings, and triumphs; their
internecine and other wars--are all fully and clearly described in
the Ossianic cycle. They still remain demanding adequate treatment,
when we arrive at the age of Conn [Note: See page 20.], Art, and
Cormac, kings of Tara in the second and third centuries of the
Christian era. All have been forgotten for the sake of a vague
representation of the more sublime aspects of the cycle, and the
meretricious seductions of a form of composition easy to write and
easy to read, and to which the unwary or unwise often award praise