diligence of their evangelical labours, than remarkable for their taste in elegant literature. They rather, from a conscientious motive, maintained a kind of warfare with bards and sennachies, such as our more austere divines did with the theatre.

UPON the Reformation, they found the taste of the people vitiated by the legends of the monks, and the absurd and extravagant fictions of the latter bards; and that this acquired passion for the marvellous, laid them open to every kind of imposture, and made them less relish the simplicity of those truths in which it was the duty of the clergy to instruct them. It was no wonder, then, that in the indiscriminate war carried on by pious zeal against poetical fiction, these fragments, wrapt in a debasing cloud of adventitious matter, should meet with little favour or indulgence. Yet Dr MACPHERSON, whose probity and learning were universally respected, having led the way in elucidating these antiquities, some of the younger clergy of more cultivated taste, admired and studied them. With these however Dr JOHNSON did not chance to meet; and when he came to Edinburgh, where he met with people abundantly qualified to discuss with him all other points of polite literature, he could not, though he had been open to conviction, obtain any light upon this; a Scotchman, who is not a Highlander, being no better qualified to decide upon it, than a native of London is to judge of the authenticity of a poem in Welsh. The Doctor returned hardened in infidelity. The correspondence which succeed

ed is well known. In this the Doctor had greatly the advantage, both from the purity of his moral, and the dignity of his literary character; as well as from the violence with which the current of prejudice ran against his adversary.

GROWN quite regardless of his literary character, under all this hostility, Mr MACPHERSON devoted himself to more profitable pursuits, but did not find them a sufficient consolation for the severity with which he had been treated by the public,-a severity which he may be said to have in some measure justly incurred, by his presumptuous attempt to translate HOMER. Though wealthy, prosperous, and seemingly indifferent to public applause, the chagrin he felt at having so mingled falsehood with truth, that he could not separate them with credit to himself, preyed up- . on his spirits; and a short time before he died, he ordered the Gaelic originals of the translated poems to be printed for the satisfaction of his particular friends.

POSTSCRIPT.

SINCE writing the preceding Observations, I have seen a Dissertation on the subject, written with so much acuteness, learning, and force, as will probably render it in the general opinion conclusive. It would be tedious

and difficult to explain all the grounds on which the opinions I entertain are founded;-suffice it to say, that I still think as I did formerly, yet would not be understood to engage in controversy, where I only meant to amuse, and in some degree inform a friend; and chose this subject, because it was the only one I thought myself capable of showing him in a new light.

MORDUTH.

A FRAGMENT:

TRANSLATED FROM THE GAELIC.

İt

was the intention of the Translator to insert the Gaelic Originals of MORDUTH and the succeeding poem, in compliance with a wish expressed by Mr MACKENZIE, well known as the Addison of Scotland; but this volume having considerably exceeded its proposed size, and the Gaelic of both poems being already published in Gillies's and Macdonald's Collections, she contents herself with giving the Translations.

ARGUMENT.

MORDUTH, we are told, is the name of the aged hero, who, speaking in the first person, narrates part of the transactions of his early life, relative to the wars then carried on between the Scotch and the Norwegians. He begins in a manner suited to pre-dispose the mind to regard him with mingled admiration and compassion. In an apostrophe to the wind, whose violence disturbed his meditations, he recurs to the days of his youth, when he ardently pursued the enemies of his country; and in foretelling the approaching weakness of the wind, when time should destroy its power, introduces an affecting allusion to his own feeble and forlorn state.

MORDUTH.

BOOK I.

COM'ST thou with swift wing in thy strength, O wind'!

Wilt thou not to my helpless age be kind?
And lightly o'er my rocky shelter wave,
While here I sit all mournful by the grave,

Where busy memory feeds on endless woe,
While youth's dear lost companions sleep below.
And while they still my sorrowing thoughts engage,
I sink beneath th' enfeebling hand of age:
Alone I tremble till the storm be past,-

Then strive not with my weakness, northern blast!
Once was my step as light as thine, O wind!
With fearless valour matchless strength combin'd;
My foes from many a battle, pierc'd with wounds,
With feeble step retir'd to distant bounds :-
But Sorrow yet shall stop thy airy flight

O wind! nor shalt thou climb yon mountain's height,
Nor o'er the dark wood bear th' impending cloud-
That wood which once beneath thy prowess bow'd: