Johnson was threatened by Macpherson with a beating, and he answered: "I
hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat by the
menaces of a ruffian ... I thought your book an imposture; I think it an
imposture still ... Your rage I defy ... You may print this if you will."
Proofs of the imposture were little by little discovered by the critics.
There were some real fragments in his first volume; but even these he had
altered, and made symmetrical, so as to disguise their original character.
Ossian would not have known them. As for Fingal, in its six duans, with
captional arguments, it was made up from a few fragments, and no such poem
ever existed. It was Macpherson's from beginning to end.
The final establishment of the forgery was not simply by recourse to
scholars versed in the Celtic tongues, but the Highland Society appointed
a committee in 1767, whose duty it was to send to the Highland pastors a
circular, inquiring whether they had heard in the original the poems of
Ossian, said to be translated by Macpherson; if so, where and by whom they
had been written out or repeated: whether similar fragments still existed,
and whether there were persons living who could repeat them; whether, to
their knowledge, Macpherson had obtained such poems in the Highlands; and
for any information concerning the personality of Fingal and Ossian.
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