to which Grainger's recent translation had attracted the Celtic bard. "She came in all her beauty, like the moon "from the cloud of the East. Loveliness was around her as light. Her steps were the music of songs." i. 260. "Awe moved around her stately steps; like two stars were "her radiant eyes; like two stars that rise on the deep, "when dark tumult embroils the night."-" If on the "heath she moved, her breast was whiter than the down "of Cana; if on the sea-beat shore, than the foam of the rolling ocean. Her eyes were two stars of light; her "face was heaven's bow in showers; her dark hair flowed "round it like streaming clouds. Thou wert the dweller "of souls, white-handed Strinadona." i. 24. "Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye, "Illius ex oculis, quum vult exurere Divos, "Mille habet ornatus, mille decenter habet." TIB. 1. 4. 2. The four first lines of Tibullus were certainly in Milton's contemplation at the time. But his paraphrase, “grace 66 was in all her steps, in every gesture dignity and love,” is more literally transcribed by Macpherson, in "loveliness 66 was around her as light, her steps were the music of songs." "The next passage, "if on the heath she moved, * her breast was whiter than the down of Cana; if on the "Son of the morning, whither art thou fled, 3. The Fragments, published while the author studied Scriptures. divinity, are more deeply tinged with his professional pursuits. That nothing might be lost they are awkwardly strung together in Carrick-Thura, or inserted as episodes in the epic pastoral Fingal. The scripture style is preserved in Fingal, to whom the queen of Sheba's address to Solomon is applied 35; but Comala, and the episodes in CarrickThura, are little else than an ambitious imitation of the Song of Solomon; an adaptation of its images and peculiar phraseology, to the scenery and pastoral state of the high 35 Happy are thy people, O Fingal; thou art the first in their danger, the wisest in the days of their peace, &c. i. 302. Happy are thy men, and happy are these thy servants, which stand continually before thee and hear thy wisdom. 2 Chron. 9. 7. lands. The style and images of scripture are easily discerned in the following passages. "Who fell on Carun's sounding banks? Was he white as the snow of Ardven ? "blooming as the bow of the shower? Was his hair as the "mist of the hill? soft and curling on the day of the sun? "Was he like the thunder of heaven in battle? fleet as the "roe of the desert ?" i. 42. "Who is this," says Solomon, "that cometh out of the, wilderness like pillars of smoke; "leaping upon the mountains like a roe, or a young hart; "terrible as an army with banners; my beloved is white "and ruddy, the chiefest among men. Thy hair is as a "flock of goats that appear from Gilead." Canticles passim. "Look from thy rock, my love, let me hear the voice of "Comala; come to the cave of my rest, the storm is past, "the sun is on our fields; come to the cave of my rest, "huntress of echoing Ardven."-"O my dove," says Solomon, “thou that art in the clefts of the rock; let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice. Lo the winter "is past; the rain is over and gone; arise, my love, my fair "one, and come away!" The last imitation is suggested, as less obvious, by the translator himself. But Comala exclaims, with Gray's bard," confusion pursue thee over "thy plains; ruin overtake thee thou king of the world." Id. 43. st "Ruin seize thee, ruthless king, "Confusion on thy banners wait." In the episode of Shilrick and Vinvela, "Dost thou "rest by the fount of the rock, or by the noise of the mossy steam?-Didst thou but appear, O my love, a "wanderer on the heath, thy hair floating on the wind. "behind thee; thy bosom heaving on the sight; thine eyes "full of tears for thy friends, whom the mist of the hills "has concealed? Thee I would comfort, my love, and bring to thy father's house. But is that she that appears "like a beam of light in the heath, bright as the moon in "autumn, as the sun in a summer storm? Comest thou, "O maid! over rocks, over mountains, to me?" i. 55---8. In the Canticles, "Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, "where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flocks to rest " at noon?—I would lead thee and bring thee to thy mother's "house."-"Who is she that looketh forth in the morning, "fair as the moon, clear as the sun, terrible as an army with banners?" "Over hill, over dale, over high mountains." Scotch song. In the Fragment of Duchomar and Morna, inserted in Fingal: "Comest thou like a roe from Malmōr, like a hart "from thy echoing hills."-" Be thou," in Solomon's Song, "like a roe or a young hart on the mountains of Bether." -“ Morna, fairest of women, thou art snow on the heath ; "thy hair is the mist of Cromla, when it curls on the hill; thy breasts are two smooth rocks seen from Branno of "streams. Thy arms like two white pillars in the halls of "the great Fingal." i. 226, 7. In the Canticles, "Whither "is thy beloved gone, O thou fairest among women? thy “breasts are like two young roes that are twins; thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine head upon thee is as Carmel, "and the hair of thy head like purple :-his legs are as "pillars of marble, set in sockets of pure gold." These imitations require no comment: the same phraseology is adopted, and the same images are appropriated, almost without alteration, to the Celtick bard. Thura and 4. Such classical beauties as might have occurred for- InCarrricktuitously, in the course of a poem, to the genuine Ossian, Carthon. would have been interwoven with the narrative from which they arose. But Macpherson, in his imitation of the ancients, had prepared such detached episodes, and splendid addresses to the sun in Carthon, to the moon in Darthula, the dream and death of Malvina, &c. as had no connexion with the poems to which they were afterwards attached. Ostentatious addresses or odes to the sun, the moon, and the evening star, are alone a detection of modern poetry to which they are peculiar; but in these passages, the scriptural style of his early studies is uniformly preserved. The chiefs are pillars of fire or of darkness; her heart is the house of pride; from the house of glory, joy, mourning, and the house of the proud; the dark and narrow house; from the grave, the house appointed for all living; and the same idiom is employed in Fingal's encounter with the spirit of Loda, though an obvious imitation of Diomed's combats with Venus and Mars. "A blast came from the "desert. On its wings was the spirit of Loda.-I look 66 upon the nations and they vanish. My nostrils pour the "blast of death; the blast is in the hollow of my hand." 1. бо. "He rode upon a cherub and did fly, yea he did "fly on the wings of the wind." Psalm xviii. 10. "By "the blast of God they perish, by the breath of his nos"trils are they consumed." Job, iv. 9. "Who hath "measured the waters in the hollow of his hand ?" Isaiah, lx. 12. But in Carthon, a story taken from an Irish ballad, and from Keating's account, of Cuthullin, who kills his son Conloch in single combat 36, the imitations sometimes improve upon the original. The comparison of Clessanimor to" a steed in his strength, who finds his companions in the "breeze, and tosses his bright mane in the wind," i. 79. is a literal and a wretched transcript from Pope, of the same simile in Homer and Virgil. 96 Keating, 196. Miss Brooke's Reliques of Irish Poetry, 9 |