LITERARY FRAUDS

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 128, 1 June 1935, Page 24

LITERARY FRAUDS

A BRAZEN SCOT

Surely the tale of literary forgeries, first mentioned in these columns three weeks ago, and continued in Mr. C. R. H. Taylor's article on Vrain Lucas, Chatterton, -a~d others, is not complete without reference to the shrewd-. l est and most business-like literary • fraud of all time, writes Mr. M. S. Nestor. James Macpherson was born in 1738, at Ruthven, in Inverness-shire. After finishing his studies at King's College, Aberdeen, he became a schoolmaster in his native village, published a poem entitled "The Highlander" in 1758, contributed about the same time verses to ■ the "Scot's Magazine," and in the following year, having met with the Rev. Dr. Alexander Carlyle, minister of Inversk, and John Home, the author of "Douglas," he showed them some fragments of Gaelic verse of which he also gave them "translations." These "translations" (16 in all) appeared in 1760, and were so much admired that the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh raised a subscription to enable Macpherson to make a tour through the Highlands for the purpose of collecting more of the same. Macpherson was brilliantly success^ ful in the "discovery" of ancient literary treasures. He found MSS in regions where no one before had suspected their existence, and where not even the most painstaking student has since been fortunate enough to obtain them. The result was the appearance in London in 1762 of the poems of Ossian, a renowned Celtic bard, under the title of "Fingal, an Epic Poem in Six Books." Ossian was said to have lived ;n the third century, and to have been the son of Fingal; the poems ascribed to him in manuscripts of any antiquity are few and short and of no remarkable merit. The success of "Fingal" was almost miraculous. They were received with admiration in almost every country in Europe, and were translated into French, Italian, German, Danish, and Polish, Needless to say, there soon arose a host of accusers, led by Dr. Johnson and David Hume, who both maintained that the poems were fabrications of Macpherson himself. Further, the Irish" raised a cry of injustice, since Macpherson made Ossian a Scotch Highlander, whereas the Irish claimed him (quite correctly) as an Irishman. Against this massive opposition, however, Macpherson maintained a dour and uncompromising silence; the next year he improved on previous efforts with the publication of "Temora, an Epic Poem, in Eight Books." His subsequent career reads like a tale from "Arabian Nights," or an extract from the prospectus of the Mortgage Corporation. In recognition of his services to literature he was appointed surveyor-general of the Floridas (in 1764), with a salary for life, and agent to the Nabob of Arcot, a lucrative office, in 1779. At the age of 42 he entered Parliament, sat for ten years, and then retired to an estate he had purchased in Inverness-shire, where he died in 1796. He was actually interred (at his own request and expense) in Westminster Abbey. Macpherson's life'is a splendid illustration of the common maxim concerning the value of silence, but also of the principle, well known in commercial circles, of "giving the public what it wants." So far as his literary work is concerned, it is now universally discredited.