Macpherson, JAMES

Macpherson, JAMES, notorious as the 'translator' of the Ossianic poems, 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 Scots Magazine, and in the following year, having met with 'Jupiter' Carlyle and John Home, the author of Douglas, he showed them some fragments of Gaelic verse, with 'translations' of the same. These (sixteen in number) appeared in 1760, and excited so much interest that the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh subscribed money to send Macpherson on a tour through the Highlands for the purpose of collecting more of the same. The quest was successful, but the unsatisfactory statements of Macpherson about his originals and the place where he made his discoveries excited grave and well-grounded suspicions. Some MSS. undoubtedly he found, but what he published as their contents was something very different from these. The result of his labours was the appearance at London, in 1762, of the so-called poems of Ossian (q.v.), under the title of Fingal, an Epic Poem, in Six Books; and in 1763, of Temora, an Epic Poem, in Eight Books. A storm of controversy soon arose in regard to their genuineness, which can hardly yet be said to have entirely subsided, although the general verdict is one unfavourable to Macpherson. Dr Johnson's vigorous denunciation of the imposture so inflamed Macpherson that he threatened personal violence to the old man, who replied with characteristic fearlessness: 'Any violence offered me I shall do my best to repel; and what I cannot do for myself, the law shall do for me. I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian.' These poems were, however, the making of Macpherson in a worldly point of view. He was appointed in 1764 surveyor-general of the Floridas with a salary for life, and in 1779 agent to the Nabob of Arcot—a very lucrative office; entered parliament in the following year as member for Camelford, sat for ten years, and then retired to the estate of Bellville which he had purchased in Inverness-shire, and where he died February 17, 1796. His body was actually interred at his own request and expense in Westminster Abbey. He wrote historical compilations, and a wretched prose translation of the Iliad. See his Life and Letters by Bailey Saunders (1894).