his example. Bishop Percy's collection of English ballads was, therefore, received with general rapture in Germany, and the sentimental heroic poetry of Celtic origin, which Macpherson sent forth under the name of Ossian, was greeted with enthusiastic applause by a race of poets full of sentiment and warlike sympathies. SCHERER, WILHELM, 1883-86, A History of German Literature, tr. Conybeare, vol. II, p. 56.

Space (fortunately) does not permit a discussion of the Ossianic question. That fragments of Ossianic legend (if not of Ossianic poetry) survive in oral Gaelic traditions, seems certain. How much Macpherson knew of these, and how little he used them in the bombastic prose which Napoleon loved (and spelled "Ocean"), it is next to impossible to discover.LANG, ANDREW, 1886, Books and Bookmen, p. 27.

Curiously enough, although Macpherson died suddenly, his papers were searched in vain for a scrap of evidence for or against his culpability. In these days few will be credulous enough to pin their faith to the misty songs of Ullin; but there are probably some persons of intelligence, especially north of the Tay, who still "indulge the pleasing supposition that Fingal fought and Ossian sang."-GOSSE, EDMUND, 1888, A History of Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 337.

It has been seen that among his contemporaries and fellow-countrymen there were some who showed signs of the coming romantic movement; but he was the first in the English language who powerfully and decisively expressed it. And this must be set down as his signal merit. Far from being a mere translator, he was peculiarly original. Not that Macpherson created the spirit of romance.

And

It does not follow that Macpherson was a man of great genius. On the contrary, the range of his ideas was so narrow that to read any one of his poems is to become master of almost all that he had to say. The same expressions, the same images, and almost identical situations recur again and again. Repetition was affected no doubt partly to give an aspect of antiquity; but in Macpherson it goes deeper and discloses poverty of mind. Still, to deny him the praise of having well expressed his few thoughts is unjust. There is much

fustian in his style, and it speedily palls upon the ear; but the peculiar poetic prose which he formed for himself has, in little bits, a powerful charm. His descriptions of scenery and of aspects of nature are often very beautiful. We ask again and again. why they are there, but he who can forget their incongruity with a poem of the third century must feel their truth.-WALKER, HUGH, 1893, Three Centuries of Scottish Literature, vol. 11, pp. 127, 128.

Ossian points as directly to Byron as the chivalry and ballad revivals point to Scott. These indicate the two great streams in the Romantic movement. In Byron's poetry sincere or feigned-we see constantly manifest the Ossian feeling. What Byron himself thought of Ossian I have had a good opportunity to observe by perusing Byron's own manuscript notes in a copy of the Ossian poems. The following notes I copied directly from Byron's handwriting: "The portrait which Ossian has drawn of himself is indeed a masterpiece. He not only appears in the light of a distinguished warrior-generous as well as brave and possessed of exquisite sensibility but of an aged venerable bard

subjected to the most melancholy vicissitudes of fortune-weak and blind-the sole survivor of his family the last of the race of Fingal. The character of Fingal-the poet's own father-is a highly finished one. There is certainly no hero in the Iliad-or the Odyssey-who is at once so brave and amiable as this renowned king of Morven. It is well known that Hector-whose character is of all the Homeric heroes the most completegreatly sullies the lustre of his glorious actions by the insult over the fallen Patroclus. On the other hand the conduct of Fingal appears uniformly illustrious and great-without one mean or inhuman action to tarnish the splendour of his fame He is equally the object of our admiration esteem and love." Speaking of Ossian's skill in depicting female characters, he writes, "How happily, for instance, has he characterized his own mistress afterwards his wife-by a single epithet expressive of that modesty-softness-and complacency-which constitute the perfection of feminine excellence. -'the mildly blushing Everallin.' . . . I am of opinion that though in sublimity of sentiment-in vivacity and strength of

description-Ossian may claim a full equality of merit with Homer himself yet in the invention both of incidents and character he is greatly inferior to the Grecian bard." These quotations are interesting as showing how seriously Byron took Ossian and how carefully and thoughtfully he read him. The influence of Ossian lasted long after the immediate excitement caused by its novelty and professed antiquity had passed away.-PHELPS, WILLIAM LYON, 1893, The Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement, p. 153.

The problem of Macpherson's true character must now be regarded as depending, not upon any question as to the survival of ancient Celtic poetry in the Highlands for of the existence there, in Macpherson's day, of even a considerable body of such traditionary remains there seems no longer any room to doubt but rather upon the particular degree of fidelity and conscientious care displayed in his arrangement and translation of the several "fragments" recovered by him from the Highlanders, and declared by him to be none other than the disjecta membra of the long-lost epic of "Fingal."-HUTCHINSON, T., 1894, The Academy, vol. 46, p. 205.

Ossian was translated into Italian by Cesarotti; there were two versions of him in Spanish, several in German, one in Swedish, one in Danish, and two in Dutch, of which one was by Bilderdyk. In Germany, especially, he created a furor. The true originator of Northern poetry was found at last; "Thou, too, Ossian," cried Klopstock, "wert swallowed up in oblivion; but thou has been restored to thy position; behold thee now before us, the equal and the challenger of Homer the Greek." "What need," wrote Voss to Brückner, "of natural beauty? Ossian of Scotland is a greater poet than Homer of Ionia. Lerse, in a sonorous discourse at Strasburg, acknowledged three guides of the "sacred art of poetry:" Shakespeare, Homer, and Ossian-two Northern poets to a single classic. Herder wrote a comparison between the Homeric and the Ossianic epics, spoke of Ossian as "the man I have sought," and contemplated a journey to Scotland in order to collect the songs of the bards. Bürger imitated him, and Christian Heyne constituted himself champion at the University of Göttingen. Lastly, Goethe, need we remind the reader,

drew inspiration from him in "Werther" and elsewhere. When his spirits are high Werther's taste is for Homer, but in sorrow he feeds upon Ossian, and when "it is autumn within and about him," he cries: "Ossian has completely banished Homer from my heart!"-TEXTE, JOSEPH, 189599, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Cosmopolitan Spirit in Literature, tr. Matthews, p. 319.

In his former works M. d'Arboiss had

already drawn up a catalogue of Irish epics; he had examined them and briefly defined their character and their literary importance; he had taught us how to distinguish the cycle of Ulster, which crystallised in the North of Ireland around the heroic figure of King Conchobar or Conor; the cycle of Leinster, which celebrated in the east of Ireland the deeds of Osson, or Ossian, as the moderns have it; and finally the mythological cycle, formed in earth, sea and sky, around the conceptions of a religious imagination. He showed us how the two Epics of the North and the East, artificially combined and quite transformed from their rude, barbarous and fierce antiquity, were idealised out of all semblance by the rhetorical Macpherson till they condensed anew into those pale, vague, nebulous poems of Ossian which appeared so tremendous a revelation of nature to the earlier Romantics. A whole generation found in this mutilated paraphrase a joy for ever. Napoleon, Goethe, Lamartine read and raved of Ossian, as also Baour-Lormian. And Werther was to write: "Ossian has supplanted Homer in my heart." M. d'Arbois and his collaborators, Mm. Dottin, Duvau and Ferdinand Grammont give, in the present volume, numerous specimens of these various epochs, which dwell, still unpublished, in the dusty seclusion of libraries and archives. It is interesting to study them, to turn from Macpherson to his models. Despite his inferior value-for the copy is far below the original-his versions merit our attention, not only on their own merits and as the testimony, however ill-reported, of a forgotten world, but for the indirect and latent action which during more than fifty years they continued to exercise upon the imaginative literature of Europe. In two of the episodes selected: the death of Derdrin and the death of Cuchulain, the editors

give, side by side with the version of Ossian, a literal translation from the original epic. One knows not which is the more surprising, the audacity with which Macpherson has drowned the brutal, savage, old legends in a vapour of vague exclamations, or the innocent good faith with which our romantic fore-fathers accepted these tricked-out ecstasies and insipid, tame tirades which we have not the patience to read to the end of, as the unsophisticated voice of Nature. It is a matter to give pause to the advocates of an absolute standard in criticism, a shaft the more in the quiver of the impressionists, chi oggi han il grido, till a new mode arise.-DARMESTETER, JAMES, 1894 -96, Celtica, English Studies, tr. Mrs. Darmesteter, p. 183.

The imposture (for that in the main it was imposture is certain) of Macpherson is more interesting as a matter of tenmatter of tendency than of essence. The world wanted romance; it wanted "the Celtic vague;" it wanted anything but what it had had: Macpherson met it with a sort of clumsy genius. All the others named catered for the same want, not with the intelligent scoundrelism of the adulterator, but with the honest attempt of the still unqualified artist. SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1896, Social England, ed. Traill, vol. v, p. 262.

We do not acquit a man of dishonesty because he passes a few good half-crowns amid hundreds of his own coinage. We know that this is a necessary trick of the game, and part of the prudential wisdom of knavery. We certainly believe that many men, and many women, given a few Gaelic names and a tale to tell about them, could, after one perusal of "Fingal" or "Temora," turn out a poem which, bating perhaps the felicities which appear at very rare intervals in Macpherson's compilation, and prove that he had some poetic gift, would pass for MacphersonOssianic.-TOVEY, DUNCAN C., 1897, Ossian and his Maker, Reviews and Essays in English Literature, pp. 138, 144.

In studying the landscape of Macpher

son's "Ossian" we soon learn that it belongs unmistakably to Western Argyleshire. Its union of mountain, glen, and sea removes it at once from the interior to the coast. Even if it had been more or less inaccurately drawn, its prominence and consistency all through the poems

would have been remarkable in the productions of a lad of four-and-twenty, who had spent his youth in the inland region of Badenoch, where the scenery is of another kind. But when we discover that the endless allusions to topographical features are faithful delineations, which give the very spirit and essence of the scenery, we feel sure that whether they were written in the eighteenth century or in the third, they display a poetic genius. of no mean order. The grandeur and gloom of the Highland mountains, the spectral mists that sweep round the crags, the roar of the torrents, the gleams of sunlight on moor and lake, the wail of the breeze among the cairns of the dead, the unspeakable sadness that seems to brood over the landscape whether the sky be clear or clouded-these features of west Highland scenery were first revealed by Macpherson to the modern world. This revelation quickened the change of feeling, already begun, in regard to the prevailing horror of mountain-scenery. It brought before men's eyes some of the fascination of the mountain-world, more especially in regard to the atmospheric effects that play so large a part in its landscape. It showed the titanic forces of storm and tempest in full activity. And yet there ran through all the poems a vein of infinite melancholy. The pathos of life manifested itself everywhere, now in the tenderness of unavailing devotion, now in the courage of hopeless despair.GEIKIE, SIR ARCHIBALD, 1898, Types of Scenery and their Influence on Literature, p. 44.

GENERAL

His "History" is pronounced by Fox to be full of "impudent" falsehoods; it has long sunk from public notice, and had no charm either of style or thought to relieve it from neglect. Nor is it possible to believe, that one who wrote so dull a history could have produced so wild and imaginative a poem as that which the world has generally attributed to him.LAWRENCE, EUGENE, 1855, Lives of the British Historians, vol. II, p. 238.

Though he never could have become so important a figure as he thought himself, we are convinced that he would have achieved a fame in literature quite as great and much less sinister if he had been. more honest.-TOVEY, DUNCAN C., 1897,

at eighty-seven years as at sixty, with his short, sturdy frame, busy in his garden, keen over botany, physiology, or physics. Yet with all his energy he would plaintively say, with a kindly look on his good, plain, common-sense face, which looked like an incarnation of his own philosophy: "I am ashamed of having lived so long after having ceased to be useful." GRAHAM, HENRY GREY, 1901, Scottish Men of Letters in the Eighteenth Century, p. 259.

His life had been a singularly calm one, and his chief characteristics had been an indomitable faculty of patient thought and a sincerity of purpose that never wavered. Such influence as he possessed was gained by quiet and persistent effort; and he did not affect his contemporaries either by any marked originality of genius, or by a striking or eccentric personality.—CRAIK, SIR HENRY, 1901, A Century of Scottish History, vol. II, p. 209.

GENERAL

I have been looking into Dr. Reid's book on "The Active Powers of Man." It is

But his

written with his usual perspicuity and acuteness; is in some parts very entertaining; and to me, who have been obliged to think so much on those subjects, is very interesting throughout. The question concerning Liberty and Necessity is very fully discussed, and very ably; and, I think, nothing more needs be said about it. I could have wished that Dr. Reid had given a fuller enumeration of the passions, and been a little more particular in illustrating the duties of morality. manner is, in all his writings, more turned to speculation than to practical philosophy; which may be owing to his having employed himself so much in the study of Locke, Hume, Berkeley, and other theorists; and partly, no doubt, to the habits of study and modes of conversation which were fashionable in this country in his younger days. If I were not personally acquainted with the Doctor, I should conclude, from his books, that he was rather too warm an admirer of Mr. Hume. He confutes, it is true, some of his opinions; but he pays them much more respect than they are entitled to.-BEATTIE, JAMES, 1788, Letter to Sir William Forbes, March 5; Account of the Life and Writings of Beattie, ed. Forbes, vol. III, p. 37.

The merit of what you are pleased to

call my Philosophy, lies, I think, chiefly, in having called in question the common theory of ideas, or images of things in the mind, being the only objects of thought; a theory founded on natural prejudices, and so universally received as to be interwoven with the structure of language. Yet, were I to give you a detail of what led me to call in question this theory, after I had long held it as self-evident and unquestionable, you would think, as I do, that there was much of chance in the matter. The discovery was the birth of time, not of genius; and Berkeley and Hume did more to bring it to light than the man that hit upon it. I think there is hardly any thing that can be called mine in the philosophy of the mind, which does not follow with ease from the detection of this prejudice.-REID, THOMAS, 1790, Letter to Dr. James Gregory, Works.

The author of an "Inquiry into the Mind," and of subsequent "Essays on the Intellectual and Active Powers of Man," has great merit in the effect to which he has pursued this history. But, considering the point at which the science stood when he began his inquiries, he has perhaps no less merit in having removed the mist of hypothesis and metaphor with which the subject was enveloped, and in having taught us to state the facts of which we are conscious, not in figurative language, but in the terms which are proper to the subject. In this it will be our advantage to follow him; the more that, in former theories, so much attention had been paid to the introduction of ideas or images as the elements of knowledge, that the belief of any external existence or prototype has been left to be inferred from the mere idea or image; and this inference, indeed, is so little founded, that many who have come to examine its evidence have thought themselves warranted to deny it altogether. And hence the criticism of ingenious men, who, not seeing a proper access of knowledge through the medium of ideas, without considering whether the road they had been directed to take was the true or a false one, denied the possibility of arriving at the end. FERGUSON, ADAM, 1792, Principles of Moral and Political Science, vol. I.

With respect to his character; its most prominent features were, intrepid and inflexible rectitude; a pure and devoted