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 surprised 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 inquiry, 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 public, as a translation from the Erse; but
that this was a fraud, Johnson declared, without hesitation. "The Erse,"
he says, "was always oral only, and never a written language. The Welsh
and the Irish were more cultivated. In Erse, there was not in the world
a single manuscript a hundred years old. Martin, who, in the last
century, published an account of the Western Islands, mentions Irish,
but never Erse manuscripts, to be found in the islands in his time. The
bards could not read; if they could, they might, probably, have written.
But the bard was a barbarian among barbarians, and, knowing nothing
himself, lived with others that knew no more.
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