"I was so struck, so _extasie_ with their infinite beauty, that
I writ into Scotland to make a thousand enquiries....
The whole external evidence would make one believe
these fragments (for so he calls them, tho' nothing can
be more entire) counterfeit: but the internal is so strong
on the other side, that I am resolved to believe them genuine
spite of the Devil & the Kirk."

Gray concluded his remarks with the assertion that "this Man is
the very Demon of Poetry, or he has lighted on a treasure hid for
ages."[8]

Nearly fifty years later Byron wrote a "humble imitation" of
Ossian for the admirers of Macpherson's work and presented it as
evidence of his "attachment to their favorite author," even though
he was aware of the imposture. In a note to "The Death of Calmar
and Orla," he commented,

"I fear Laing's late edition has completely overthrown every
hope that Macpherson's Ossian might prove the translation
of a series of poems complete in themselves; but while the
imposture is discovered, the merit of the work remains undisputed,
though not without faults--particularly, in some parts, turgid
and bombastic diction."[9]

In 1819 Hazlitt felt that Ossian is "a feeling and a name that
can never be destroyed in the minds of his readers," and he classed
the work as one of the four prototypes of poetry along with the Bible,
Homer, and Dante. On the question of authenticity he observed,