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"Awful the chief advanced, his armour bright "Reflects the fires, and gleams along the night;

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Hovering he stood, above the sleeping band,

And shone an awful column o'er the strand; "Thus often to the midnight traveller "The stalking figures of the dead appear; "Silent the Spectre towers before the sight, "And shines an awful image through the night; "At length the giant phantom hovers o'er "Some grave unhallowed, stained with human goreBefore my eyes a ghastly phantom stood,

"A mangled man, his bosom stained with blood; "Silent and sad the phantom stocd confest, "And shewed the streaming flood-gates of his breast."

These, and other images, transcribed and improved in Ossian, are marked with a strong poetical, but uncultivated genius, such as Macpherson always possessed; for with much imagination, an occasional sublimity, and sometimes an exquisite pathos, he never acquired a correct or refined taste. The same incidents are also repeated. The nocturnal combat, and the exchange of friendship with Haco, recur in Swaran's rencounter with Fingal in the Cathloda, and in Ossian's interview with Cathmor in Temora. A soldier returning wounded from the field, expires in the Highlander before his tale is told; and Calmar returns mortally wounded in Fingal, to warn Cuthullin of Lochlin's approach. Alpin and Oscar solicit an enterprise, in the same terms, as unknown to fame: "Oscar is like the mist of “Cona: I appear and I vanish away." i. 196.

"But I gleam once, then sink and am no more."

The flame of the oak, the bosses of the shields, the second sight, and even the pursuit of the deer on the heath,

Fragments.

occur in the Highlander. White bosomed sails and maids,
the Roman eagle, (" spreads he the wings of his pride;"
Ossian,) and the bards themselves are introduced, " to quaff
"the generous spirit of the bowl," "the strength of the
shells," and to preserve the memory of the dead, in oral
story or recorded rhyme. And the fair Aurelia, like Sul-
malla and the eternal ladies in mail, attending on Haco in
the disguise of a young warrior;

"Wields in her snowy hand the aspin spear;
"The silver mail hung round her snowy waist;
"The corslet rises on her heaving breast.”

4. As the Highlander fell still born from the press, the author transferred his pen, from poetry professedly original, to the more profitable task of translation from the Earse. The Fragments of ancient Gaelic Poetry, written at Moffat, were first circulated in manuscript, and published at Edinburgh in 1760, two years after the Highlander disappeared, when the author's taste and style were, considerably improved. The public were prepared for Earse poetry, by a fantastical tale of Jerom Stone's, in the Scots magazine; but the Fragments coincided happily with the sentimental vein, which Young's Night Thoughts, Gray's inimitable Elegy, Shenstone's Pastorals, and Sterne. had introduced. Men of more taste than classical, or historical knowledge, believed them authentic; the novelty of measured prose pleased, and persuaded the public that the translator had no ambition to become a poet. The Fragments contained the opening, and some episodes of Fingal, with an intimation that the whole might be recovered if encouragement were given; and from the prospect of obtaining a national Epopee, a considerable subscription was raised, and the author was dispatched to the highlands in quest of epic poems. His situation at that time was ob

scure and indigent. Originally a schoolmaster in Badenoch, afterwards a domestic tutor, he was then a student of divinity, employed by Balfour the bookseller as corrector of the press; but the subscription imposed an obligation to persist in the original deceit. The similar imposture and success of Hardiknute, which had furnished the fable of his Highlander, might encourage him to proceed. But I believe that Fingal was already sketched out, from the Irish Fingal. ballads and traditions of his battles with Magnus and others, which promised to supply Macpherson with heroes, incidents, and a few occasional episodes. The Temora had not then occurred, as appears from a ridiculous Fragment on the death of Oscar 32. Two after his expe

years

32 Dermid and Oscar fight a duel for Dargo's daughter. Oscar, grieved at his friend Dermid's death, persuades his mistress to shoot an arrow at the shield of Gormur, behind which he conceals himself so dexterously as to receive a mortal wound; and his mistress "pierces her white bosom with steel." No Greek poet durst have deviated from the death which Homer assigns to Achilles, Patroclus, or Hector. But Macpherson informs us in a Note to the first book of Temora, published with Fingal, that a more correct copy of the Fragment coming into his hand, enabled him to rectify the mistake. In this new edition of the Fragment, Oscar is converted into the son of Caruth, who bore the same character and name with Ossian's son. Fingal, 1st edit. p. 190. Thus all is falsehood together. In the next Fragment, Gaul, the son of Morni, is an enemy who encounters Fingal; and after a wrestling match, wherein " their bones crack like the boat of ocean, when she leaps from wave to wave, and the earth is ploughed with their heels; the aged overcame, and the tall son of Morni is bound.". Frag. 39. The wrestling match is transferred to Fingal, with which it was impossible to incorporate the Fragment as an episode. The sixth, converted in Fingal into the maid of Craca, is the only Fragment for which. there is the least authority: but how different from the original! the maid's tragedy, or the combat of Oscar and Illan, the king of Spain's son, who slew one third of the Fions in Ireland. Trans. Royal Irish Academy, i. 76. Though his taste was improved in the Fragments, Macpherson still retained the extravagance of the Highlander. In the last mentioned Fragment; "there was the clashing of swords, there the voice of steel. They struck and they thrust; they digged for death with their swords; but

dition to the highlands, the poems of Ossian were prepared for the press. A large subscription was raised, under the patronage of lord Bute, and the epic poem of Fingal was published at London, in 1762, with the lesser poems and with the first book of the Temora, suggested by the fabulous palace of Teamor in Keating, and the Irish ballad Temora. containing the real history of Oscar's death. The Temora

Imitations

was afterwards translated or extended to eight books, at lord Bute's desire, and published with additional poems, without a second expedition to the highlands; but Moilena, in king's county, and the palace of Temora, at Tara in Meath, were transferred to Ulster, by another fatal mistake, which, like Carrick-Thura and Balclutha, destroys the authenticity of the whole poem 33.

VI. 1. Another copious and curious source of detection is the constant imitation of the classicks, scriptures, and such témporary publications as were then in vogue. To

death was distant far and delayed to come. The sun began to decline, and the cowherd thought of home; then Oscar's keen steel found the heart of Ullin." The ninth Fragment of Ronan and Rivine supplied his friend Home with a tragedy, the Fatal Daughter, or Marriage, I forget its name, But the strongest mark of his improved taste is the omission of the following passage, of warrior running up hill, (the most bombast I ever read,) in the last Fragment, when inserted as an episode in Fingal. "Lamderg rushed on like a storm; on his spear he leapt over rivers; few were his strides up the hill; the rocks fly back from his heels, loud crashing they bound to the plain." Frag. p. 79.

33 Archdale's Monasticon Hibern. 389. O'Conor's Diss. 174. Keating,
135. 217. O'Flaherty's Ogygia, 354. Collect. Hibern. iii. 512. Dedica:
tion of Temora to lord Bute. Macpherson mistook Temora in Leinster,
for Emania, the fabulous palace of the kings of Ulster; but the ambiguous
motto prefixed to the Temora, was meant to indicate, not obscurely, that
the
poems were his own.

"Vultis et his mecum pariter considere regnis?
Urbem quam statuo vestra est.

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NEID L. 577.

Not a Tyrian but a Trojan city; not an Earse, but an English original.

obviate the imitations of scripture, the venerable Dr. Blair would persuade the public, that oriental poetry might, with the same propriety, be termed occidental, as it is characteristical rather of an age than of a country, and in some measure belongs to all nations in a rude and early state. Perhaps it is sufficient to observe, that though the modern poets, whose inspiration is drawn from the same source, must resemble, and may appear to imitate each other, yet no such similarity subsists between Solomon and Theocritus, the Psalmist and Pindar, Isaiah and Homer; much less between them and the northern Scalds. Between the earlier classicks and the scriptures there is no resemblance, much less an apparent imitation: but the author, desirous to appropriate Ossian to a remote antiquity, would imitate both. Instead of a few paragraphs, the subject would require a separate dissertation; but the less obvious imitations to which the reader may refer, are ostentatiously marked in the first edition as parallel passages, in which Ossian has happily equalled or excelled the originals 34.

2. Cathloda, the first poem in the present arrangement, of the was published among the last, as a studious imitation of classicks. Scandinavian manners. Starno and Swaran invoke the hawks of heaven to feast on their enemies; a new image, unknown amidst Swaran's exploits in Fingal, till suggested by Regner Lodbrok's death-song, quoted and imparted by Dr. Blair to the author. But it appears from the following descriptions in Fingal, in the preface, and in the Cathloda, that Össian was equally versed in Milton and in Tibullus,

34 The parallel passages quoted with such exultation on any minute improvement of imagery, or refinement in diction, can be explained only by the well known story of Jervas the painter. Having succeeded happily in copying, he thought in surpassing, a picture of Titian, he looked first at the then at the other, and then, with parental complacency, cried Poor little Tit! how he would stare! Orford's Anecd. of Painting.

one,

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