James Macpherson
James Macpherson was an influential Scottish poet born on October 27, 1736, in Ruthven, Inverness Shire. He is best known for his controversial claims surrounding the fictional Gaelic poet Ossian and the subsequent works he attributed to him. After studying at several universities, Macpherson initially struggled with his poetry but gained fame with the publication of "Fragments of Ancient Poetry" in 1760. This collection led to further works, including the epic poems "Fingal" and "Temora," which he claimed were translations from ancient texts.
Despite their popularity, these works sparked significant debate regarding their authenticity, with critics, including Samuel Johnson, labeling them as forgeries. Macpherson's literary career extended beyond poetry; he wrote history volumes and translated works like Homer's "Iliad." He also ventured into politics, serving as a member of Parliament and as an agent for the Nabob of Arcot. Macpherson's later years saw him return to Scotland, where he used his wealth to build a mansion before passing away on February 17, 1796. His legacy remains marked by both his poetic contributions and the ongoing debate over the authenticity of his works.
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James Macpherson
Poet
- Born: October 27, 1736
- Birthplace: Ruthven, Inverness Shire, Scotland
- Died: February 17, 1796
- Place of death: Belville, Badenoch, Scotland
Biography
James Macpherson was a Scottish poet whose involvement in literary controversy has overshadowed his actual writings. He was born in Ruthven, Inverness Shire, Scotland, on October 27, 1736, the son of farmers Andrew and Ellen Macpherson. After his early education at Badendoch, Macpherson studied at the King’s College, University of Aberdeen; he transferred to Marischal College and then to the University of Edinburgh, but he never received a degree. At his father’s urging, Macpherson studied for the ministry but was never ordained. Leaving Edinburgh in 1756, he taught at Ruthven and tutored at Moffat in 1759. Eventually he had four or five illegitimate children; Macpherson provided for each of them throughout their lives and for their mothers in his will.
After he published some early poems in Scots Magazine, Macpherson published his first book of poetry, The Highlander: A Poem in Six Cantos (1758), a poor effort which he himself tried to suppress. Two years later, he published Fragments of Ancient Poetry Collected in the Highlands of Scotland and Translated from the Gallic or Erse Language. Macpherson claimed that much of the latter volume came from a Gaelic poet named Ossian, who lived in the third century c.e.. The book was immensely popular, and Macpherson was financed to undertake a literary collecting tour throughout the Scottish Highlands. This tour resulted in the discovery of Ossian’s two epic poems, Fingal: An Ancient Epic Poem (1761), and Temora (1763). The Works of Ossian was published in two volumes in 1765.
The Ossianic ballads were a genuine group of medieval poems, totaling some 80,000 lines, and named for Oisin, the chief bard of tales and poetry on the subject of ancient warrior Finn MacCumhaill. However, Macpherson did not discover any new epics, and he certainly failed to locate anything written in the third century. Instead, he popularized the spelling of Oisin as Ossian and claimed that the Irish warriors who were the subject of the poems were in fact Caledonians, ancestral to the Scots and, according to Macpherson’s “translations,” quite superior to the Irish in battle. These so-called translations were admired by many for their romantic, melancholy nature, but they were also derided as inauthentic by many scholars, notably Samuel Johnson. When challenged to produce the original poems he had translated, Macpherson fabricated them by retranslating them into Gaelic; Macpherson’s deception thus became an actual forgery, although he never admitted this during his lifetime. The Ossian controversy lasted from the 1760’s until 1805, when a committee of inquiry proved that the “translations” for the most part were Macpherson’s original work.
Macpherson also wrote several volumes of British history, beginning with An Introduction to the History of Great Britain and Ireland (1771). He translated Homer’s Iliad into prose in a two-volume set published in 1773; the translation met with widespread ridicule. In 1764, Macpherson became secretary to the governor of east Florida and moved to Pensacola. A year later, he returned to London and worked for the English government as a political writer, defending England’s colonial policy toward Americans. He was a member of Parliament for Camelford, Cornwall, from 1780 until his death. In 1781, he became an agent in London for Mohammed Ali, the Nabob of Arcot, a position that made Macpherson a wealthy man.
His health failing, Macpherson returned to Scotland and used his wealth to build the mansion of Belville in Badendoch, Inverness Shire. He died there on February 17, 1796. A two-volume edition of the poems of Ossian and Macpherson was published in 1805.