Johnson's Life and Genius.
��could not wait for that half century, and therefore mentioned things as he found them. If in any thing he has been mistaken, he has made a fair apology in the last paragraph of his book, avowing with candour, 'That he may have been surprized by modes of life, and appearances of nature, that are familiar to men of wider survey, and more varied conversation. Novelty and ignorance must always be reciprocal ; and he is conscious that his thoughts * on national manners are the thoughts of one, who has seen but little.'
The Poems of Ossian made a part of Johnson's enquiry during his residence in Scotland and the Hebrides. On his return to England, November 1773, a storm seemed to be gathering over his head ; but the cloud never burst, and the thunder never fell. Ossian, it is well known, was presented to the publick as a translation from the Earse ; but that this was a fraud, Johnson declared without hesitation 2 . * The Earsej he says, ' was always oral only, and never a written language. The Welch and the Irish were more cultivated. In Earse there was not in the world
��' He had not revisited Aberdeenshire since he left it as a child of eight years of age, with a child's illusions as to the surroundings of a home which has been his world. He was wholly unprepared for the rough awakening which awaited him, and on the rare occasions on which he could be induced to speak of his own early days, he dwelt with great force on the sensations he experienced when brought face to face with the reality before him. The backward condition of agriculture, the miserable dwell ings and half-savage habits of the people, the ignorance and coarseness of the gentry, the inclemency of the climate, the ugliness and monotony of the country bare, undulating, and treeless were all very unlike his dreams and filled him with dismay.' The Earl of Aberdeen, 1893, p. II.
��1 ' I cannot but be conscious that my thoughts,' &c.
2 Life, ii. 302, 309, 347, 383.
The following note is in Anderson's Johnson, ed. 1815, p. 342: 'The Bishop of Dromore (Dr. Percy) has allowed Dr. Anderson to declare, that he repeatedly received the most positive assurances from Sir John Elliot, the confidential friend of Mac- pherson, that all the poems published by him as translations of Ossian were entirely of his own composition.'
Elliot was a physician of whom (Letters, viii. 542): He had hap pened to attend my housemaid, and would not take a fee; to prevail, I pretended to talk on my own gout, and he was so tractable, and suffered me to prescribe to him what he should prescribe to me . . . that I continued to see him.'
a single
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