The genuine history of the Britons asserted against Mr. Macpherson ...

THE BRITONS ASSERTED. 155
FROM p. 58 to 78, Mr. Macpherfon is
engaged in a formal attack upon thofe pre-
tenlions, which the Irifh have made to an original
very different from the other inhabitants of the
Britifh ifles ; in order to prove them and the
Scots the defendants of Caledonians. And
the attack is very eafy. Thqfe fabricks of fi£lion,
which the Irifh predulity and patriotifm have
been rearing for ages, all melt away before the
flrong beams of Hiflory and Criticifm. But in-
deed the romances are replete with fuch prodigies
of folly, and are fo univerfally defpifed by
the judicious on the continent and in our own
ifland, that they were not worthy of a ferious
refutation. And fuch a writer as Mr. Macpher-
fon, engaged in fuch a contefl, feems to me like
the redoubtable Sir John in Shakefpear, attack-
ing a dead man fword in hand, and with one
wound more in his thigh carrying him away in
triumph \
Mr.
* But it is proper to obferve, that almoft every arguitient
in this difquilition is borrowed, fometimes literally, and ge-
nerally without acknowledgement, from Innes's Critical EfT-.y,
The reference to Strabo in p. 60 and 61 of Mr. Macpherfon ;
to Mela, Tacitus, and Solinus, in p. 62 i the anfwers to objec-
tions