Home,
full of the literary gossip of the hour, seized upon the opportunity to
question Macpherson concerning the poems that were rumored to have
survived among the Gaelic-speaking population of Scotland. In the light
of what we now know it is not difficult to understand the genesis of this
great European fraud. Macpherson was proud of his race, which he had
celebrated in an heroic poem called _The Highlander_. He had interested
himself in Gaelic poetry, though his knowledge of the tongue was not
good, and he had by him some fragments of genuine Gaelic poems. He was
flattered by Home's appeal to him, and, feeling perhaps that the few and
slight genuine poems which he could produce would hardly warrant the
magnificence of his allusions to Gaelic literature, he forged a tale in
poetic prose, called _The Death of Oscar_, and presented it to Home as a
translation from the Gaelic. The poem was much admired, and Macpherson,
unable now to retrace his steps without declaring himself a cheat, soon
produced others from the same source. These were submitted to the
literary society of Edinburgh, with the great Dr. Blair at its head, and
were pronounced to be the wonder of the world. From this point onward,
during a long and melancholy life, poor Macpherson was enslaved to the
fraud which had its beginning in the shyness and vanity of his own
character. He was bound now to forge or to fail; and no doubt the
consciousness that it was his own work which called forth such rapturous
applause supported him in his labors and justified him to his own
conscience.


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