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give readers a good many thrills besides.
    And if a side-effect of Macpherson’s fortuitous discovery was great riches, glory and, eventually, a seat in the House of Commons, well, those were crosses he was willing to bear.
    When
Fragments of Ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands of Scotland
was an instant success for its publisher, earning its ‘translator’ the ultimate accolade – a letter of recommendation from the philosopher David Hume – Macpherson did what all literary wunderkinds must do: he quit his job and set off to find more inspiration. Luckily for him, it took no more than a few sallies forth into the heathery countryside to miraculously come upon enough material to fill two more books of Erse verse,
Fingal
(1762) and
Temora
(1763).
    It was around this time, however, that eyebrows began to be raised over the authenticity of Ossian’s work. Samuel Johnson, never a man to mince his words, claimed that not only could any man have written this doggerel, but many children could have done so too. Yet the books had been translated into several European languages and, as with so many hoaxers, the juggernaut must have seemed to Macpherson to be impossible to stop now. And anyway, why would he want to? His attitude to his doubters was relaxed, even when all the major names in publishing and criticism were at war over the veracity of his poems. He claimed to have the original manuscripts of much of the work, but declined to share them with his readers. (Years later, one of his supporters did publish the ‘originals’ but they were Gaelic poems written in Macpherson’s hand, and only sparked off a new controversy over whether they hadn’t been translated from English to Gaelic in the first place.)
    Now hideously pompous and ill-humoured, Macpher– son was nobody’s favourite. Even Hume, not known for his bitching, said he had ‘scarce ever known a man more perverse and unamiable’. Macpherson disingenuously conceded in his preface to the 1765 edition of
The Poems of Ossian
, that his overnight renown ‘might flatter the vanity of one fond of fame’. He further wrote that ‘The eagerness with which these Poems have been received abroad, is a recompense for the coldness with which a few have affected to treat them at home’. But given that within a few years he would have abandoned poetry for a life in colonial politics, it seems that the plaudits of foreigners were not recompense enough.
    By 1764, he was preparing to leave the British Isles for the colony of Pensacola, now Florida (a suitable retirement place for a wealthy old cross-patch even now) where he had been offered an official post.
    For the next part of his relatively short life, he kept out of the literary scene which had built him up and knocked him down, but on returning to London in 1766 he misguidedly decided to take up the pen again, producing his version of the history of Britain. If this got laughed out of the critics’ circle (which it did) nothing could compare to the monumental pasting his translation of Homer’s
Iliad
received in 1773. It takes an author of supreme confidence to undertake a work of this magnitude, especially when one of the greatest versions of all time – Alexander Pope’s – had been published a generation before. What bedraggled laurels Macpherson had to rest on as an interpreter of ancient heroic myth were not enough to shield him from the merciless kicking he now received. But perhaps by this time he was genuinely unbothered by the scorn poured on him from all corners. Perhaps he was happy just to be rich, well-travelled and talked about. Considering what we know of his insatiable desire for fame, surely he would have been rather pleased to know that long after his death he would continue to ignite passionate debate about the authorship of his most famous work.
    Critics and historians have now proved conclusively that Macpherson did some admirable and interesting things. He did love the poetic folklore of