"But to return to our subject--Do you recollect, I say, any of those poems which afforded you such amusement ?" "Very hard this," thought M'Intyre, "that he will speak with such glee of everything which is ancient, excepting my family.

"-- Then, after some efforts at recollection, he added aloud, "Yes, sir,--I think I do remember some lines; but you do not understand the Gaelic language." "And will readily excuse hearing it.

But you can give me some idea of the sense in our own vernacular idiom ?" "I shall prove a wretched interpreter," said M'Intyre, running over the original, well garnished with aghes, aughs, and oughs, and similar gutterals, and then coughing and hawking as if the translation stuck in his throat.

At length, having premised that the poem was a dialogue between the poet Oisin, or Ossian, and Patrick, the tutelar Saint of Ireland, and that it was difficult, if not impossible, to render the exquisite felicity of the first two or three lines, he said the sense was to this purpose: "Patrick the psalm-singer, Since you will not listen to one of my stories, Though you never heard it before, I am sorry to tell you You are little better than an ass"-- "Good! good!" exclaimed the Antiquary; "but go on.

Why, this is, after all, the most admirable fooling--I dare say the poet was very right.