classic "swains," of personifications of "Virtue" and "Fortune," with the other stilted machinery of his time. Had he, therefore, been inclined to "improve" upon his text, his work could hardly fail to smell of the lamp, to contain artificialities, anachronisms, and allusions impossible to a dweller in the third century. Drums, trumpets, or at least bagpipes must have found their way into some of the descriptions of war, and at their feasts the heroes would surely have quaffed their drink from some politer vessel than a cup of shell. The difficulty of avoiding such slips may be judged from the mistakes made even by the high priest of imagination. Shakespeare himself makes King Lear in the crisis of his distress beg the undoing of a button, an article of dress unknown probably for centuries after the date of the tragedy. One of the most remarkable features of these translations, however, is their entire freedom from such defects. In all Ossian there is only one allusion to wine. It is referred to by way of simile in "The Battle of Lora" as a very beautiful and rare object, and probably, like the "thousand lights from the stranger's land" mentioned in "Carthon," it may have been found among the spoils of some Roman defeat.
The same kind of reasoning may be applied to the much finer particulars of literary style. A writer of modern days makes free use of general
