THE name of Lachlan Macpherson, Esq. of Strathmashie, is well known to
those who are conversant with the dissertations on the poems of Ossian.
About the year 1760 he accompanied his neighbour and namesake, James
Macpherson, Esq. of Belville, in his journey through the Highlands in
search of those poems, he assisted him in collecting them, and in taking
them down from oral tradition, and he transcribed by far the greater
part of them from ancient manuscripts to prepare them for the press, as
stated by himself in a letter to Dr Hugh Blair of Edinburgh. He was
beyond all doubt a man of great powers of mind, and a Celtic poet of no
mean order. He died at the comparatively early age of forty years,
greatly lamented by his contemporaries, leaving behind him no written
literary production.
Fragments of Mr Lachlan Macpherson's poetry, hitherto unpublished, will
be acceptable to those who have done so much of late to promote the
interests of Celtic literature. In some of his poems, composed in the
sportive exercise of his poetic genius, he makes the same objects the
subjects of his praise and censure alternately. We give the following
specimens:--
On the occasion of a marriage contract in his neighbourhood, the poet
honoured the company with his presence. The important business of the
occasion having been brought to a close, the bridegroom departed, but
remembering that he had left on the table a bottle not quite empty, he
returned and took it with him. The poet, viewing this as an act of
extreme meanness, addressed the bridegroom as follows:--