more, a very great number of the same poems on the same subjects, and then collating these different copies or editions, if they may be so called, rejecting what was spurious or corrupted in one copy, and adopting from another something more genuine and excellent in its place, afforded him an opportunity of putting together what might fairly enough be called an original whole, of much more beauty, and with much fewer blemishes, than the Committee believe it now possible for any person, or combination of persons, to obtain."
Presuming upon this difficulty, Macpherson's opponents did not scruple to bring against him charges of the basest sort. Not content with doubting his faithfulness as a translator, they asserted that he had stolen much of his work from the masterpieces of ancient and modern literature. These critics boldly attacked the finest passages of the translations, and, upon the strength of a fancied resemblance to passages elsewhere, declared them plagiarisms. The acmé of this kind of criticism was reached by the publication of the edition of Ossian already alluded to with "Notes and Illustrations" by Mr. Malcolm Laing. Of Mr. Laing it has been said by a previous editor that he "is one of those detectors of plagiarisms, and discoverers of coincidences, whose exquisite
