iff overhanging the Atlantic; and by one or two scientific
thrusts, with incredible daring, disarms the cloud, dissipates the
storm, and sends his atmospheric adversary shrieking down the wind with
such violence that "Innistore shook at the sound; the waves heard it on
the deep, and stopped on their course with fear." The scene is described
in that well-known passage in _Carric-Thura_, which Macpherson himself
characterises as "the most extravagant fiction in all Ossian's poems."

Now the question as regards the authenticity or reliability of this very
passage, is whether Macpherson understood the meaning of it; what it
represented, where the conflict occurred, or how it happened? It has
been sufficiently demonstrated elsewhere--in "Ossian and the Clyde," pp.
311-324--that the encounter took place near the celebrated "Dwarfie
Stone" on the western headland of Hoy in the Orkneys--a region more
remarkable for its sudden electric gatherings and violent atmospheric
currents than almost any other in Great Britain, and at that particular
spot so much so, that the very scene described in Ossian has been
selected by Walter Scott for a similar electrical display in the
"Pirate." But of this obvious fact, and of all that is connected with it
in his own translation, Macpherson is so ignorant that he not only does
not point it out, but does not understand it, and cannot even conjecture
where it was. His great antagonist Laing is equally at fault on the
subject, and by way of exposing, as he believes, the dishonesty of
Macpherson, endeavours to show that in patching up his account
Macpherson had mistaken Thurso for Thura. Macpherson, in fact, knew
nothing either about Thurso or Thura--even less than Laing did; and it
is only in the work above cited that either the scene has been
identified, or the encounter explained.

Here, then, is a question, not of linguistic criticism, but of
scientific fact--of geographical position, of atmospheric agency--which
should be disposed of on its own merits, and which, like many others of
the same sort, must ultimately transfer the whole inquiry to a much
higher field than that of syllables and syntax.

But the description in question, it may be objected, is very much
exaggerated, and therefore cannot be relied on: which is the very
objection Macpherson himself urged--that it is "the most extravagant
fiction in all Ossian's poems." But if that was the case in his opinion,
how could the passage be