MACHPERSON, JAMES. — Scottish man of letters, b. in Ruthven on 27 October 1736, d. in Belville on 17 February 1796.
He is the famous manipulator of the poems of Ossian (Ossian is the name of a legendary Gaelic warrior and bard), which aroused such enthusiasm among the Romantics. The material of the Ossianic cycle consists of Gaelic and Scottish poems, of which M. published a first volume in 1760, followed by Fingal at the end of 1761 and Temora in 1765. After M.’s death, it was established that he had invented many parts of Ossian. In Italy, Ossian was translated by the abbot Melchiorre Cesarotti (cf. modern ed., edited by G. Balsamo Crivelli, Turin 1924).
BIBL.: T. B. Saunders, Life and letters of J. M., London 1906; P. Van Tieghem, Le préromantisme, Paris 1924, pp. 195–287. Augusto Guidi