James Macpherson (1736 to 1796) was a Scottish poet, translator, historian and politician, best known for the Ossian poems, which became one of the most influential and disputed literary works of the eighteenth century. He was born at Ruthven in Badenoch, Inverness-shire, into a Gaelic-speaking Highland family. He studied at King's College, Aberdeen, and later in Edinburgh, then worked as a village schoolmaster and tutor. His career changed in 1759, when he showed the playwright John Home some Gaelic verse he had gathered. Encouraged by Home and by the critic Hugh Blair, he published Fragments of Ancient Poetry Collected in the Highlands of Scotland in 1760. Edinburgh literati then raised funds for him to search the Highlands and Islands for more material. The result was the epics Fingal (1761) and Temora (1763), presented as English translations of the third-century bard Ossian and gathered as The Works of Ossian in 1765. Their rhythmic prose and melancholy images of mist, storm and lost heroes caught the taste of the age. They shaped the early Romantic movement and were admired by Goethe, Herder, Napoleon and Thomas Jefferson. They also helped create the popular image of a Celtic past. Doubts about their authenticity began almost at once. Samuel Johnson was among the fiercest critics, and Macpherson never produced the Gaelic manuscripts that critics demanded. An inquiry by the Highland Society of Scotland in 1805 concluded that he had drawn on genuine Gaelic ballads but freely rearranged, adapted and invented, rather than translating a single ancient epic. Modern scholars generally treat the poems as an original creative work built on real oral tradition. Macpherson did not limit himself to poetry. In 1764 he went to Pensacola, in British West Florida, as secretary to the governor. Back in Britain he wrote historical works, including An Introduction to the History of Great Britain and Ireland (1771) and Original Papers (1775), and published a literal prose translation of Homer's Iliad (1773), which was widely mocked. He also worked as a political writer defending government policy, and as agent in London for the Nawab of Arcot. He sat in Parliament as member for Camelford from 1780 until his death. He grew wealthy and bought an estate, Belleville, near Kingussie. He died there in 1796 and was buried in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.
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