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

J76 THE GENUINE HISTORY OF
" formed only in the faireft days of fummer.
*' (Mare quod Britanniam et Hiberniam inter-
** luit, undofnm et inquietum, toto in anno non
*' nifi feflivis pauculls diebus eft navigabile ; navi-
'^ gant autem vimineis alveis quos circumdant
" ambitione tergorum bubulinorum. Solin.xxxv.).
*' The fertility of the foil of lar-ghael [Argyle]
*' could never be an inducement to an Irifh
*' migration into that divifion of Caledonia. If
** poverty, or their being overflocked with num-
'' bers, compelled the inhabitants of the pre-
" tended Dalrietta, or the Route in the county of
'^ Antrim, to go in queft of foreign fettlements,
^ they ought in common prudence to have tried
*^ their fortune in the fouthern divifion of their
*' own country, and not in the fterile mountains
" of the weftern Caledonia '."
In making thefe Extra61:s, I am obliged to tran-
fcribe Mr. Macpherfon line by line, in order to
give each argument its full play, and to aft ho-
nourably with hira and the reader. And each
argument, like this, is a mere Sorites, an accu-
mulation of little reafons, that, inconfiderable in
themfelves, may appear important in their
union. But, in order to anfwer the whole, I mud
reduce it into its conftitucnt parts, examine eacb
* So Sir G. Mackenzie, p. 375 and 40^, vol. i, aflerts the
Irifli fea to have been generally not navigable in curraghs, and
alfo (.]uotc* Solinus for it.
feparately^f