As Swift has, with some reason, affirmed that all sublunary happiness consists in being well deceived, it may possibly be the creed of many, that it had been wise, if after Dr. Blair's ingenious and elegant disserta tion on the venerable Ossian, all doubts respecting what we have been taught to call his works had for ever ceased: since there appears cause to believe, that numbers who listened with delight to the voice of Cona, would have been happy, if, seeing their own good, they had been content with these poems accom panied by Dr. Blair's judgment, and sought to know no more. There are men, however, whose ardent love of truth rises, on all occasions, paramount to every other consideration and though the first step in search of it should dissolve the charm, and turn a fruitful Eden into a barren wild, they would pursue it. For these, and for thc idly curious in literary problems, added to the wish of making this new edition of The Poems of Ossian as well-informed as the hour would allow, we have here thought it proper to insert some account of a renewal of the controversy relating to the genuineness of this rich treasure of poetical excel lence.
