'His disbelief of the authenticity of the poems ascribed to Ossian, a Highland bard, was confirmed in the course of his journey by a very strict examination of the evidence offered for it: and although their authenticity was made too much a national point by the Scotch, there were many respectable persons in that country who did not concur in this; so that his judgment upon the question ought not to be decried, even by those who differ from him. As to myself, I can only say, upon a subject now become very uninteresting, that when the fragments of Highland poetry first came out, I was much pleased with their wild peculiarity, and was one of those who subscribed to enable their editor, Mr. Macpherson, then a young man, to make a search in the Highlands and Hebrides for a long poem in the Erse language, which was reported to be preserved somewhere in those regions. But when there came forth an Epick Poem in six books, with all the common circumstances of former compositions of that nature; and when, upon an attentive examination of it, there was found a perpetual recurrence of the same images which appear in the fragments; and when no ancient manuscript to authenticate the work was deposited in any publick library, though that was insisted on as a reasonable proof, [italics] who [end italics] could forbear to doubt?'