imaginative faculties, still lie could see, and feel, and paint too in water-colours, and on air-canvass—and is one of the masters. "From the paucity of the images and interests introduced," says William Howison finely, in his strange volume, "The Contest of Twelve Nations," "Ossian approaches nearest, of all the poets, to a generalized uniformity of strain, and becomes monotonously pathetic. The characters of his heroes want discriminating traits. The beauty of the composition results from the feeling which has once commenced being never afterwards interrupted. The ghosts appear to exist in a state of unchangeable sadness, and every scene has nearly the same parts, a few separate trees, a torrent, a deer or two passing by the grey stones which mark the grave of a hero, and in the air, a profusion of mists, which reconcile the rest of the landscape to one tone." Wordsworth does not seem to know that Morvern of old comprehended a greater extent of territory than now belongs to it; but he may rest assured that, in the region that bore that name, sledges have been seen for centuries, in their season, rattling along at rail-road speed. Malcolm Laing himself, speaking of the ancient Caledonians, says, "their cars are infallible marks of a pastoral nation recently migrating;" so the argument against the existence of car-borne heroes is not tenable, drawn from the unequal surface of Morvern.
The poet Gray fell into the delusion—if delusion it be—and in his letters frequently expresses his wonder and delight in the beautiful and glorious inspirations of the Son of the Mist. Scott, in an interesting letter to Anna Seward, says, (see Life, vol. ii.)—"Ossian and Spenser were the two books which the good old bard (Blacklock) put into my hands, and which I devoured rather than perused. These tales were for a long time so much my delight, that I could repeat, without remorse, whole cantos of the one, and duans of the other; and woe to the unlucky wight who undertook to be my auditor, for, in the height of my enthusiasm, I was apt to disregard all hints that my recitations became tedious. It was a natural consequence of progress in taste, that my fondness for these authors should experience some abatement. Ossian's poems, in particular, have more charms for youth than for a more advanced stage. The eternal repetition of the same ideas and imagery, however beautiful in themselves, is apt to pall upon a reader whose taste has become somewhat fastidious; and though I entirely agree with you, that the question of their authenticity should not be confounded with that of their literary merit, yet scepticism on that head takes away their claim for indulgence as the productions of a barbarous and remote age; and what is perhaps more natural, it destroys that feeling of reality which we should otherwise combine with our sentiments of admiration. . . . . Macpherson was a Highlander, and had his imagination fired with the charms of Celtic poetry from his very infancy. He knew, from constant experience, that most Highlanders, after they have become complete masters of English, continue to think in their own language; and it is to me demonstrable that Macpherson thought almost every word of Ossian in Gaelic, although he wrote it down in English. . . . . These circumstances gave a great advantage to him in forming the style of Ossian, which, though exalted and modified according to Macpherson's own ideas of modern taste, is in great part cut upon the model of the tales of the Sennachies and Bards. . . . Macpherson, in his way, was certainly a man of high talents, and his poetic powers are honourable to his country, as the use which he made of them, and I fear his personal character in other respects, was a discredit to it." Boys and virgins! you will not slight the songs that young Walter loved.
But let us talk together about the Doctor. How could such poetry be the product of a barbarous age?
"Barbarity," saith he, "I must observe, is a very equivocal term; it admits of many different forms and degrees; and though, in all of them, it excludes polished manners, it is, however, not inconsistent with generous sentiments and tender affections. What degrees of friendship, love, and heroism, may possibly be found to prevail in a rude state of society, no one can say. Astonishing instances of them, we know from history, have sometimes appeared; and a few characters, distinguished by those high qualities, might lay a foundation for a set of manners being intro-
