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ESSAY

ON

THE AUTHENTICITY

OF

THE POEMS OF OSSIAN.

SECTION I.

Of the Period in which these Poems were composed.Connection with Roman History.-Carausius.Caracalla.-Appellations of Places in Ossian's Poems.-Orkneys.-Carrickthura.

THE period which has been generally assigned as the æra of Ossian, is the beginning of the third century. It is admitted, that this deduction can be made only from

A

the internal evidence of the poems which have been ascribed to him. In a case like this, we can expect no collateral evidence from the contemporary writers of Greece and Rome, to whom the language of the Caledonians was unknown, and by whom they themselves were accounted barbarous.

I am therefore disposed to consider, in the same light that Mr Laing does, the attempt which has been made, by Mr Macpherson, to connect these poems with the history of the Romans. What, indeed, can be more improbable, as Gibbon long ago remarked, than "that the son of Severus,

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who, in the Caledonian war, was known

only by the name of Antoninus, should be "described, in these Poems, by a nickname "invented four years afterwards, and scarcely "used by the Romans, till after the death " of the emperor." I may add, that nothing can be more absurd than to suppose, that the inhabitants of Rome should bestow,

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