Here he became a professional pamphleteer, always taking the
ministerial side, and diversifying these labours by publishing a
translation of Homer, in the style of his Ossian, which, as Coleridge
says of another production, was 'damned unanimously.' Our readers are
familiar with his row with Dr Johnson, who, when threatened with
personal chastisement for his obstinate and fierce incredulity in the
matter of Ossian, thus wrote the author:--
'To Mr JAMES MACPHERSON.
'I received your foolish and impudent letter. Any violence offered me
I shall do the best to repel, and what I cannot do for myself, the law
shall do for me. I hope I shall not be deterred from detecting what I
think a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian.
'What would you have me to retract? I thought your book an imposture. I
think it an imposture still. For this opinion I have given my reasons to
the public, which I dare you to refute. Your rage I defy. Your abilities,
since your Homer, are not so formidable, and what I hear of your morals
inclines me to pay regard, not to what you shall say, but to what you
shall prove. You may print this if you will.
'SAM. JOHNSON.'
Nothing daunted by this, and a hundred other similar rebuffs; Macpherson,
like Mallett before him, but with twenty times his abilities, pursued
his peculiar course.
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