“Why is not the original deposited in some public library, instead of exhibiting attestations of its existence? Suppose there were a question in a court of justice, whether a man be dead or alive. You aver he is alive, and you bring fifty witnesses to swear it. I answer, 'Why do you not produce the man?”

—  James Macpherson

Samuel Johnson, quoted in James Boswell The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785), p. 487.
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James Macpherson 46
Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician 1736–1796

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