From what I saw with my own eyes, I knew that the imagery was spurious.

In nature everything is distinct, yet nothing defined into absolute independent singleness.

In Macpherson's work it is exactly the reverse; everything (that is not stolen) is in this manner defined, insulated, dislocated, deadened,--yet nothing distinct.

It will always be so when words are substituted for things.

To say that the characters never could exist, that the manners are impossible, and that a dream has more substance than the whole state of society, as there depicted, is doing nothing more than pronouncing a censure which Macpherson defied; when, with the steeps of Morven before his eyes, he could talk so familiarly of his Car-borne heroes;--of Morven, which, if one may judge from its appearance at the distance of a few miles, contains scarcely an acre of ground sufficiently accommodating for a sledge to be trailed along its surface .-- Mr.Malcolm Laing has ably shown that the diction of this pretended translation is a motley assemblage from all quarters; but he is so fond of making out parallel passages as to call poor Macpherson to account for his '_ands_' and his '_buts_!' and he has weakened his argument by conducting it as if he thought that every striking resemblance was a _conscious_ plagiarism.