Macpherson, James

(1736-1796)

   Scottish poet who was born into a poor family from Ruthven, Inverness-shire. He collected Gaelic manuscripts and transcribed orally transmitted Gaelic poems, published as Fragments of Ancient Poetry ... Translated from the Gallic or Erse Language (1760). From 1764 to 1766 he worked in some government capacity in West Florida. He grew rich in London defending (as his agent) Mohammed Ali, nabob of Arcot, against the East India Company. He was a member of Parliament for Camelford, Cornwall, from 1780 until he died in Inverness-shire; he is memorialized by a stone in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. His poetic works are overshadowed by doubts about the authenticity of his Ossian Poems (1762); were they genuine translations from the 3rd-century Gaelic poet Ossian (as he claimed), or the product of his fertile imagination? Samuel Johnson denounced the poems as forgeries and campaigned vigorously against Macpherson. The decision was reached in the late 19th century that there was no hard evidence they were wholly genuine. Some of his other poems: "On the Death of Marshal Keith," "The Highlander," "The Hunter," "The Night-Song of the Bards," "The Songs of the Five Bards, & of the Chief."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Lyra Celtica: An Anthology of Representative Celtic Poetry. E.A. Sharp and J. Matthay, eds. John Grant, 1924. Mark Akenside, James Macpherson, Edward Young. S.H. Clark, ed. Fyfield Books, 1994. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Poems of Ossian. Nichol, 1765. University of Delaware Library: Forging a Collection. James Macpherson and the Ossian Poems (http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/forgery/ossian.htm).