Certain it is that men of the greatest genius have admired these Poems, among prose-writers Bishop Warburton and Dr. Parr, among poets Gray; Mason and Hurd, while they rejected their genuineness and authenticity, withheld not their tribute of applause in respect to the composition. Who can fairly declare that the admiring Gray would have been ashamed or afraid to imitate them, had he felt any inclination to make the attempt? It is certain that men of taste and judgment have not disdained to imitate or versify OSSIAN: I have already laid before the reader Mr. T. Green's version of the Address to the Sun; if I recollect rightly, there are some imitations of OSSIAN in Miss Smith's Fragments, and even in the earlier compositions of Lord Byron. No man can have a right to say that the OSSIANIC Poems "have been wholly uninfluential upon the literature of the country," and that "no succeeding writer appears to have caught from them a ray of inspiration," unless he has, with a full and perfect recollection of the Poems, carefully read over all English poetry, subsequent to their publication, for the express purpose of enquiring into the fact. When Mr. Wordsworth speaks of "the boy Chatterton" as the only formal imitator of OSSIAN, he should recollect that he was a boy of virile mind, and possessed a true poetical taste. To Mr. Wordsworth I am indebted for the following courteous, frank, and friendly communication in reply to a Letter, which I addressed to him, and the reader will probably agree with me in thinking it an interesting addition to what Mr. Words worth has published in his Poems :·

66

Sir,

"Rydal-Mount, April 23, 1829.

In the 380th page of the 2d vol. of the last edition of my Poems, (1827,) you will find a notice of the poetry printed by Macpherson under the name of OSSIAN, in which it is pronounced to be in a great measure spurious, and in the 4th vol. of the same edition p. 238, is a Poem, in which the same opinion is given. I am not at present inclined, nor probably ever shall be, to enter into a detail of the reasons, which have led me to this conclusion. Something is said upon the subject in the first of the passages, to which I have taken the liberty of referring you. Notwithstanding the censure, you will see proofs both in the piece p. 238, and in p. 15, of the 3d vol. of the same edition, that I consider myself much indebted to MACPHERSON as having made the English public acquainted with the traditions concerning OSSIAN and his age. Nor would I withhold from him the praise of having preserved many fragments of Gaelic poetry, which without his attention to the subject might perhaps have perished. Most of these, however,

are more or less corrupted by the liberties he has taken in the mode of translating them. I need scarcely say that it will give me pleasure to receive the volume, in which you have given your reasons for an opinion on this subject different from my own.

I remain, Sir, faithfully yours,

"To E. H. Barker, Esq."

WM. WORDSWORTH."

Mr. Wordsworth's opinion is noticed in the following article:

X. "The authenticity of the Poems ascribed to OSSIAN, is a subject full of doubt and intricacy, into the mazes of which it is not my intention to enter. It is difficult to believe that poems formed so nearly upon the Aristotlean rules, should have been produced in an age, and amongst a people, where those rules were totally unknown; it is still more difficult to believe that such poems, never having been written, should have been preserved through so many ages, by oral tradition alone. But, perhaps an attentive reader would declare that, all circumstances considered, it would be the greatest difficulty of all to believe, that the whole is a modern invention. The absence of all traces of religion, however, in these poems, is a very singular fact, and strikes me as a strong argument against their authenticity; as the poetical compositions of all other nations are so closely connected with their mythology. The rocky steeps of Morven too, do not seem to be a very appropriate scene for the exploits of car-borne' heroes; and Mr. Wordsworth adds his own personal experience, and it is a high authority, against the probability of the genuineness of OSSIAN'S Poems, by saying, that no man, who has been born and bred up among mountainscenery, as OSSIAN was, would describe it as he has done. This objection, however, cuts both ways. These Poems were written, if not by OSSIAN, by MACPHERSON, and MACPHERSON was himself an Highlander. I have also heard more than one landscape-painter of eminence, well acquainted with the scenery of the Poems, and such evidence I cannot help considering of considerable weight,-bear testimony to the power and fidelity of OSSIAN's descriptions. The beauty and merit of the Poems is, however, a question quite independent of their authenticity. For myself, I confess that the most popular and most often quoted passages are not my greatest favourites. OSSIAN'S most laboured efforts do not strike me as his best. It is in a casual expression, in a single simple incident, that he often startles us by the force and originality of his ideas. What a picture of desolation does he force upon our imagination, when describing the ruins of Balclutha by that one unlaboured, but

powerful incident, The fox looked out from the window." The ghost of Crugal, the dim and shadowy visitant from another world, is also painted by a single stroke of the pencil: The stars dim-twinkled through his form;' and the early death of Cormac is prophesied in a simile as original, as it is powerful, Death stands dim behind thee, like the darkened half of the moon behind its growing light.' Had OSSIAN, or the author of the pieces ascribed to him, written nothing but the three passages, which I have just cited, he would have proved himself a genuine poet.

"The grand characteristic of OSSIAN is pathos, as that of IoMER is invention, and that of MILTON is sublimity. Whether he describes scenery, or delineates character, or narrates events, tenderness is the predominating feeling excited in the mind. His battle-pieces impress us more with compassion for the vanquished, than admiration for the victor. We feel more sympathy for the sufferings of his heroines, than we do of delight at their beauty. His heroes, if young, are cut off before their fame is achieved; or if old, have survived their strength and prowess. Even Fingal himself is at last shewn to us as a feeble ghost, lamenting the loss of his mortal fame and vigour."

The Literary Remains of the late HENRY NEELE, consisting of Lectures in English Poetry, Tales, and other Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose and Verse, Lond. 1829. p. 72.

1. What Mr. Neele, (as well Adelung,) considers to be a. very singular fact, and a strong argument against the authenticity of the Poems, - the absence of all traces of religion, as the poetical compositions of all other nations are so closely connected with their mythology," is in truth no mean evidence for their genuineness and authenticity, because what could be more natural than for a Christian forger of such Poems to introduce religion into every page? 2. If "the rocky steeps of Morven do not seem to be a very appropriate scene for the exploits of car-borne' heroes," they would not have been selected by a forger, who was himself a Highlander. 3. My excellent friend, Mr. J. J. Welsh, to whom I am indebted for the above extract, as well as for several others connected with this subject, observes in the Letter, which accompanied it, (May 18, 1829.) "The first quotation given by Neele, and so highly eulogised by him, is evidently copied from the Lamentations of Jeremiah v, 18. Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it."

XI. "I have by accident got a sight of this mighty FINGAL. I believe I mentioned my suspicions of the Fragments: they are ten-fold greater of this Epic Poem. To say nothing of the want of external evidence, or, which looks still worse, his

shuffling over in such a manner the little evidence he pretends to give us, every page appears to me to afford internal evidence of forgery. His very citations of parallel passages bear against him. In poems of such rude antiquity, there might be some flashes of genius; but here they are continual, and cloathed in very classical expression. Besides, no images, no sentiments, but what are matched in other writers, or may be accounted for from usages still subsisting, or well-known from the story of other nations; in short, nothing but what the enlightened Editor can well explain himself. Above all, what are we to think of a long Epic Poem disposed, in form, into six books, with a beginning, middle, and end, and enlivened in the classic taste with episodes? Still this is nothing. What are we to think of a work of this length, preserved and handed down to us entire, by oral tradition, for 1400 years, without a chasm or so much as a various reading, I should rather say, speaking? Put all this together, and if FINGAL be not a forgery, convict;-all I have to say is, that the sophists have a fine time of it. They may write, and lie on, with perfect security. And yet has this prodigy of North-Britain set the world agape. Mr. Gray believes in it; and without doubt this Scotchman may persuade us, by the same arts, that FINGAL is an original Poem, as another employed to prove that Milton was a plagiary. But let JAMES MACPHERSON beware the consequence: truth will out, they say, and then,

Qui Bavium non odit, amet TUA CARMINA, MEVI.

My dear Lord, excuse this rhapsody, which I write currente calamo."

Letter of Bp. HURD to Bp. WARBURTON, Dec. 25, 1761. p. 332.

XII. "Haud tamen ullum Homericorum carminum exemplar Pisistrati sæculo antiquius extitisse, aut sexcentesimo prius anno ante Christum natum scriptum fuisse, facile credam; rara enim et perdifficilis erat iis temporibus scriptura ob penuriam materiæ scribendo idonea; cum literas aut lapidibus exarare, aut tabulis ligneis aut laminis metalli alicujus insculpere oporteret; quo modo in laminis plumbeis antiquissimum Hesiodi exemplar apud Delphos asservabatur. Laminæ autem, quæ totius Iliadis vel Odyssea capaces fuissent, omnem rationem modumque ponderis et impensi excessissent; atque ideo memoriter retenta sunt, et hæc, et alia veterum poetarum carmina, et per urbes ac vicos, et in principum virorum ædibus decantata a rhapsodis istis, qui histrionicam quandam artem exercebant, et alienorum fructibus ingeniorum sese alebant. Neque mirandum est, ca per tot sæcula sic integra conservata esse, quoniam, non ut Scotorum quidam de PSEUDO-OSSIANI Sui

Poematibus persuadere laborabant, casu quodam novo et inaudito per homines rusticos et indigentes, aliis negotiis et curis distractos et impeditos, tradita erant, sed per eos, qui, ab omnibus Græciæ et coloniarum regibus et civitatibus mercede satis ampla conducti, omnia sua studia in iis ediscendis, retinendis, et rite recitandis conferebant. Ne tamen Scoti de poesi sua Celtica soli sine æmulis gloriarentur, Hibernicus antiquarius facetissimus poëma haud paullo antiquis, si credere libet, de bello Trojano, patria lingua prisca scriptum invenit: quam linguam, sive Celticam, sive Scythicam, sive Magogicam, sive Pelasgiam, dixeris, non aliam esse ca, e qua omnium Græcorum carmina antiquiora translata sint, præsertim Homerica ; quæ Terpandrum, septimi ante Christum natum sæculi lyricum et citharistam aut alium quemvis ejusmodi hominem transtulisse contendit; neque unquam suspicatus est vir egregius, Iliadem suam Hibernicam ex iisdem materiis, quibus Shakespearii Troilus et Cressida, confictam esse, eodem vel seriore etiam sæculo: quamvis id tuto admittere potuerit, et plane nihilominus evincere Hiberniæ Iliaca vetustiora quam Scotia Ossianica Carmina esse. (Collectanea Hibernica, Præf. in V. 111.)”

R. P. KNIGHT'S Prolegomena, sive de Carminum Homericorum Origine, Auctore, et Etate, itemque de Prisca Lingua Progressu et Præcoci Maturitate, Lipsia 1816. 8vo. ed. Ruhkopf, p. 34.

1. Mr. Knight, then, admits the possibility of preserving long poems by oral tradition, and in the case of the Homeric poems the fact is indisputable for the solid reasons stated by him. This, then, is something gained by the believers in the genuineness and the authenticity of the OSSIANIC Poems; for their opponents argue as loosely or as unfairly, as if the preservation of Poems by oral tradition in any nation were impossible. 2. Mr. Knight, however, contends for the vast difference between the two cases, because there were rhapsodists in Greece, whose sole occupation was that of learning and reciting the Homeric poems, and the Highlanders were too rustic and too poor to maintain any; but he pushes the argument too far, as the Highlanders, though rustic and poor, have always had what we may call a poetic taste among them, they have been remarkable for a tenacious and vivacious recollection of ancestral deeds, derived from oral tradition, their memory, as it were, 'dim twinkles' through their imagination, as the stars through the forms of their ghosts, the glory of their departed chieftains is the theme dearest to their hearts, the tale of the times of old' makes music to their ears,'-this is the genial current,' in which their thoughts run swiftest and smoothest and clearest and brightest,-the warrior Spirit of the Moun