Poet, born in Ruthven, Highland, N Scotland, UK. He studied at King's College and Marischal College, Aberdeen, and became a schoolteacher and poet. In 1760 he was commissioned by the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh to tour the Highlands in search of material relating to the legendary hero Fingal, as told by his son, Ossian. He published his work in 1762 as Fingal: an Ancient Epic Poem in Six Books, followed by Temora, an Epic Poem, in Eight Books (1763). They were received with huge acclaim, but a storm of controversy soon arose about their authenticity. It appears that he used only about 15 genuine pieces of original verse which he altered and amended, and invented the rest to create an epic form for them.
James Macpherson (October 27, 1736–February 17, 1796) was a Scottish poet, known as the "translator" of the Ossian cycle of poems.
Early life
He was born at Ruthven in the parish of Kingussie, Badenoch, Inverness-shire, Highland.
Collecting Scottish Gaelic poetry
On leaving college, he returned to Ruthven to teach in the school there. He also showed him manuscripts of Gaelic poetry, supposed to have been picked up in the highlands and islands, and, encouraged by Home and others, he produced a number of pieces translated from the Scottish Gaelic, which he was induced to publish at Edinburgh in 1760 as Fragments of Ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands of Scotland.
In the autumn he set out to visit western Inverness-shire, the islands of Skye, North Uist, South Uist and Benbecula.
Ossian
In 1761 he announced the discovery of an epic on the subject of Fingal (based on the Irish mythological character Fionn mac Cumhaill) written by Ossian (based on Fionn's son Oisín), and in December he published Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem in Six Books, together with Several Other Poems composed by Ossian, the Son of Fingal, translated from the Gaelic Language, written in the musical measured prose of which he had made use in his earlier volume.
The authenticity of these so-called translations from the works of a 3rd century bard was immediately challenged in England, and Dr. Samuel Johnson, after some local investigation, asserted (in Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, 1775) that Macpherson had found fragments of ancient poems and stories, which he had woven into a romance of his own composition.
Later works
In 1764 he was made secretary to General Johnstone at Pensacola, Florida, and when he returned, two years later, to Great Britain, after a quarrel with Johnstone, he was allowed to retain his salary as a pension. He went on to write several historical works, the most important of which was Original Papers, containing the Secret History of Great Britain from the Restoration to the Accession of the House of Hanover, to which are prefixed Extracts from the Life of James II, as written by himself (1775).
Legacy
After Macpherson's death, Malcolm Laing, in an appendix to his History of Scotland (1800), propounded the extreme view that the so-called Ossianic poems were altogether modern in origin, and that Macpherson's authorities were practically non-existent. The varied sources of his work and its worthlessness as a transcript of actual Celtic poems do not alter the fact that he produced a work of art which by its deep appreciation of natural beauty and the melancholy tenderness of its treatment of the ancient legend did more than any single work to bring about the romantic movement in European, and especially in German, literature. Goethe incorporated his translation of a part of the work into his novel The Sorrows of Young Werther.
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