The Fingal of Ossian, an ancient epic poem in six books. Translated from the original Galic Language, By Mr. James Macpherson; and now rendered into heroic verse, By Ewen Cameron
Publisher: Printed by William Eyres
Published: 1776
Place of publication: Warrington
Language: eng
Number of pages: 534
Description: <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">Large 4to., pp. 418, [1], with errata leaf and engraved frontispiece. Modern half calf.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">First issue (see Bib# 10037540 in this collection for the 1777 London issue).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">The important eighty-page ‘Preface’ by “Cameron Ewen,” pseudonym for Archibald McDonald, defending the authenticity of the great fabrication, follows Hugh Blair’s assembly (18 pp.) of ‘The Attestations of Several Gentlemen in the Highlands and Western Islands of Scotland,’ to the same effect, and his ‘rendering’ into rhymed decasyllabics adopts the form of ‘translation’ that James Macpherson was persuaded not to attempt. This is a major contribution to the early Ossianic controversy, surprisingly absent from many later accounts: see the bare mention in Jack Lynch’s Deception and Detection in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Burlington, 2008, p. 22).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt;">The present copy contains a remarkable presentation inscription which destroys the hitherto universally accepted attribution of the work to the (imaginary) ‘Ewen Cameron.’  On the front flyleaf in ink appears: ‘Ralph Thicknesse / the Gift of / Archibald Mc Donald, / the Author, 13 Sept / 1776’, and below in another hand, presumably the recipient’s, ‘Ewen Cameron being put for his own name.’ This re-attribution can be fully confirmed by the survival of a large portion of the original manuscript of the preface and translation, which figured in the Stuart Schimmel Forgery Collection (see Bonhams, London, 23 May 2012, lot 62): this manuscript was still catalogued as by ‘Ewen Cameron’ (for the author’s name never appears in it), but the handwriting (illustrated by Bonhams) is identical with that of the present revelatory inscription. ‘Ewen Cameron’ is thus shown to be a nom de plume, no doubt based on the famous highland clan chieftain ‘Ewen Cameron of Lochiel’ (1629-1719) – no such poet or critic is otherwise known – while ‘Archibald McDonald’ is very plausible indeed: he was the (undisguised) author of the obviously complementary volume ‘Some of Ossian’s Lesser Poems rendered into Verse: with a Preliminary Discourse in answer to Mr. Laing’s Critical and Historical Dissertation on the Antiquity of Ossian’s Poems’ (1805).</span><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://catalyst.library.jhu.edu/permalink/01JHU_INST/1lu78g9/alma991008854799707861" rel="nofollow">Click here to view the Johns Hopkins University catalog record.</a></span></span></p>