hand of Ossian appears throughout; the same rapid and animated style; the same strong colouring of imagination, and the same glowing sensibility of heart. Besides the unity which belongs to the compositions of one man, there is moreover a certain unity of subject, which very happily connects all these poems. They form the poetical history of the age of Fingal. The same race of heroes whom we had met with in the greater poems, Cuthullin, Oscar, Connal, and Gaul, return again upon the stage; and Fingal himself is always the principal figure presented on every occasion, with equal magnificence, nay, rising upon us to the last. The circumstances of Ossian's old age and blindness, his surviving all his friends, and his relating their great exploits to Malvina, the spouse or mistress of his beloved son Oscar, furnish the finest poetical situations that fancy could devise for that tender pathos which reigns in Ossian's poetry.

On each of these poems, there might be room for separate observations, with regard to the conduct and disposition of the incidents, as well as to the beauty of the descriptions and sentiments. Carthon is a regular and highly finished piece. The main story is very properly introduced by Clessammor's relation of the adventure of his youth, and this introduction is finely heightened by Fingal's song of mourning over Moina, in which Ossian, ever fond of doing honour to his father, has contrived to distinguish him for being an eminent poet, as well as warrior. Fingal's song upon this occasion, when “his thousand bards leaned forward from their seats, to hear the voice of the king," is inferior to no passage in the whole book, and with great judgment put in his mouth; as the seriousness, no less than the sublimity of the strain, is peculiarly suited to the hero's character. In Darthula, are assembled almost all the tender images that can touch the heart of man; friendship, love, the affections of parents, sons, and brothers, the distress of the aged, and the unavailing bravery of the young. The beautiful address to the moon, with which the poem opens, and the transition from thence to the subject, most happily prepare the mind for that train of affecting events which is to follow. The story is regular, dramatic, interesting to the last. He who can read it without emotion may congratulate himself, if he pleases, upon being completely armed against sympathetic sorrow. As Fingal had no occasion of appearing in the action of this poem, Ossian makes a very artful transition from his narration, to what was passing in the halls of Selma. The sounds heard there on the strings of his harp, the concern which Fingal shows on hearing it, and the invocation of the ghosts of their fathers to receive the heroes falling in a distant land, are introduced with great beauty of imagination to increase the solemnity, and to diversify the scenery of the poem.

Carric-thura is full of the most sublime dignity, and has this advantage, of being more cheerful in the subject, and more happy in the catastrophe than most of the other poems, though tempered at the same time with episodes in that strain of tender melancholy, which seems to have been the great delight of Ossian and the bards of his age. Lathmon is peculiarly distinguished by his high generosity of sentiment. This is carried so far, particularly in the refusal of Gaul on one side, to take the advantage of a sleeping foe, and of Lathmon on the other, to overpower by numbers the two young warriors, as to re

call into one's mind the manners of chivalry, some resemblance to which may perhaps be suggested by other incidents in this collection of poems. Chivalry, however, took rise in arr age and country too remote from those of Ossian, to admit the suspicion that the one could have borrowed any thing from the other. So far as chivalry had any real existence, the same military enthusiasm which gave birth to it in the feudal times, might in the days of Ossian, that is, in the infancy of a rising state, through the operation of the same cause, very naturally produce effects of the same kind on the minds and manners of men. So far as chivalry was an ideal system existing only in romance, it will not be thought surprising when we reflect on the account before given of the Celtic bards, that this imaginary refinement of heroic manners should be found among them, as much, at least, as among the Troubadours, or strolling Provençal bards, in the 10th and 11th centuries, whose songs, it is said, first gave rise to those romantic ideas of heroism, which for so long a time enchanted Europe.* Ossian's heroes have all the gallantry and generosity of those fabulous knights, without their extravagance; and his love-scenes have native tenderness, without any mixture of those forced and unnatural conceits which abound in the old romances. The adventures related by our poet, which resemble the most those of romance, concern women who follow their lovers to war disguised in the armour of men, and these are so managed as to produce, in the discovery, several of the most interesting situations, one beautiful, instance of which may be seen in Carric-thura, and another in Calthon and Colmal.

Oithona presents a situation of a different nature. In the absence of her lover, Gaul, she had been carried off and ravished by Dunrommath. Gaul discovers the place where she is kept concealed, and comes to revenge her. The meeting of the two lovers, the sentiments and the behaviour of Oithona on that occasion, are described with such tender and exquisite propriety, as does the greatest honour both to the art and to the delicacy of our author: and would have been admired in any poet of the most refined age. The conduct of Croma must strike every reader as remarkably judicious and beautiful. We are to be prepared for the death of Malvina, which is related in the succeeding poem. She is therefore introduced in person; "she has heard a voice in a dream; she feels the fluttering of her soul;" and in a most moving lamentation addressed to her beloved Oscar, she sings her own death-song. Nothing could be calculated with more art to soothe and comfort her, than the story which Ossian relates. In the young and brave Fovargormo, another Oscar is introduced; his praises are sung, and the happiness is set before her of those who die in their youth, "when their renown is around them; before the feeble behold them in the hall, and smile at their trembling hands."

But no where does Ossian's genius appear to greater advantage than in Berrathon, which is reckoned the conclusion of his song, "The last sound of the voice of Cona."

Qualis olor noto positures littore vitam,

Ingemit, et mæstis mulcens concentibus auras
Præsago quæritur venientia funera cantu.

* Vid. Huetius de origine fabularum Romanensium.

The whole train of ideas is admirably suited to the subject. Every thing is full of that invisible world, into which the aged bard believes himself now ready to enter. The airy hall of Fingal presents itself to his view; "he sees the cloud that shall receive his ghost; he beholds the mist that shall form his robe when he appears on his hill;" and all the natural objects around him seem to carry the presages of death. "The thistle shakes its beard to the wind. The flower hangs its heavy head; it seems to say, I am covered with the drops of heaven; the time of my departure is near, and the blast that shall scatter my leaves." Malvina's death is hinted to him in the most delicate manner by the son of Alpin. His lamentation over her, her apotheosis, or ascent to the habitation of heroes, and the introduction to the story which follows from the mention which Ossian supposes the father of Malvina to make of him in the hall of Fingal, are all in the highest spirit of poetry. "And dost thou remember Ossian, O Toscar, son of Comloch? The battles of our youth were many; our swords went together to the field." Nothing could be more proper than to end his songs with recording an exploit of the father of that Malvina, of whom his heart was now so full, and who, from first to last, had been such a favourite object throughout all his poems.

The scene of most of Ossian's poems is laid in Scotland, or in the coast of Ireland, opposite to the territories of Fingal. When the scene is in Ireland, we perceive no change of manners from those of Ossian's native country. For as Ireland was undoubtedly peopled with Celtic tribes, the language, customs, and religion of both nations were the same. They had been separated from one another by migration, only a few generations, as it should seem, before our poet's age, and they still maintained a close and frequent intercourse. But when the poet relates the expeditions of any of his heroes to the Scandinavian coast, or to the Islands of Orkney, which were then part of the Scandinavian territory, as he does in Carric-thura, Sulmalla of Lumon, and Cathloda, the case is quite altered. Those countries were inhabited by nations of the Teutonic descent, who in their manners and religious rites differed widely from the Celta; and it is curious and remarkable to find this difference clearly pointed out in the poems of Ossian. His descriptions bear the native marks of one who was present in the expeditions which he relates, and who describes what he had seen with his own eyes. No sooner are we carried to Lochlin, or the islands of Inistore, than we perceive that we are in a foreign region. New objects begin to appear. We meet every where with the stones and circles of Loda, that is, Odin, the great Scandinavian deity. We meet with the divinations and enchantments, for which it is well known those northern nations were early famous. "There, mixed with the murmur of waters, rose the voices of aged men, who called the forms of night to aid them in their war;" whilst the Caledonian chiefs who assisted them, are described as standing at a distance, heedless of their rites. That ferocity of manners which distinguished those nations, also becomes conspicuous. In the combats of their chiefs there is a peculiar savageness: even their women are bloody and fierce. The spirit and the very ideas of Regner Lodbrog, that northern scalder whom I formerly quoted, occur to us again. "The hawks," Ossian makes one of the Scandinavian chiefs say, "rush from all their winds;

7

they are wont to trace my course. and called the hawks of heaven. on the foes of Annir."

We rejoiced three days above the dead, They came from all their winds, to feast

Dismissing now the separate consideration of any of our author's works, I proceed to make some observations, on his manner of writing, under the general heads of description, imagery, and sentiment.

A poet of original genius is always distinguished by his talent for description.* A second-rate writer discerns nothing new or peculiar in the object he means to describe. His conceptions of it are vague and loose; his expressions feeble; and of course the object is presented to us indistinctly and as through a cloud. But a true poet makes us imagine that we see it before our eyes; he catches the distinguishing features; he gives it the colours of life and reality; he places it in such a light that a painter could copy after him. This happy talent is chiefly owing to a lively imagination, which first receives a strong impression of the object; and then, by a proper selection of capital picturesque circumstances employed in describing it, transmits that impression in its full force to the imaginations of others. That Ossian possesses this descriptive power in a high degree, we have a clear proof from the effect which his descriptions produce upon the imaginations of those who read him with any degree of attention and taste. Few poets are more interesting. We contract an intimate acquaintance with his principal heroes. The characters, the manners, the face of the country become familiar; we even think we could draw the figure of his ghosts: in a word, whilst reading him we are transported as into a new region, and dwell among his objects as if they were all real.

It were easy to point out several instances of exquisite painting in the works of our author. Such, for instance, as the scenery with which Temora opens, and the attitude in which Cairbar is there presented to us; the description of the young prince Cormac, in the same book; and the ruins of Balclutha in Carthon. "I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they were desolate. The fire had resounded in the halls; and the voice of the people is heard no more. The stream of Clutha was removed from its place by the fall of the walls. The thistle shook there its lonely head; the moss whistled to the wind. The fox looked out from the windows; the rank grass of the wall waved round his head. Desolate is the dwelling of Moina; silence is in the house of her fathers." Nothing also can be more natural and lively than the manner in which Carthon afterwards describes how the conflagration of his city affected him when a child: "Have I not seen the fallen Balclutha ? And shall I feast with Comhal's son? Comhal! who threw his fire in the midst of my father's hall! I was young, and knew not the cause why the virgins wept. The columns of smoke pleased mine eye, when they rose above my walls: I often looked back with gladness, when my friends fled above the hill. But when the years of my youth came on, I beheld the moss of my fallen walls. My sigh arose with the morning; and my tears descended with night. Shall I

* See the rules of poetical description excellently illustrated by Lord Kames, in his Elements of Criticism, vol. iii. chap. 21, of narration and description.

not fight, I said to my soul, against the children of my foes? And I will fight, O bard! I feel the strength of my soul." In the same poem, the assembling of the chiefs round Fingal, who had been warned of some impending danger by the appearance of a prodigy, is described with so many picturesque circumstances, that one imagines himself present in the assembly. "The king alone beheld the terrible sight, and he foresaw the death of his people. He came in silence to his hall, and took his father's spear; the mail rattled on his breast. The heroes rose around. They looked in silence on each other, marking the eyes of Fingal. They saw the battle in his face. A thousand shields are placed at once on their arms; and they drew a thousand swords. The hall of Selma brightened around. The clang of arms ascends. The gray dogs howl in their place. No word is among the mighty chiefs. Each marked the eyes of the king; and half-assumed his spear.”

It has been objected to Ossian, that his descriptions of military actions are imperfect, and much less diversified by circumstances than those of Homer. This is in some measure true. The amazing fertility of Homer's invention is no where so much displayed as in the incidents of his battles, and in the little history pieces he gives of the persons slain. Nor indeed, with regard to the talent of description, can too much be said in praise of Homer. Every thing is alive in his writings. The colours with which he paints are those of nature. But Ossian's genius was of a different kind from Homer's. It led him to hurry towards grand objects, rather than to amuse himself with particulars of less importance. He could dwell on the death of a favourite hero; but that of a private man seldom stopped his rapid course. Homer's genius was more comprehensive than Ossian's. It, included a wider circle of objects; and could work up any incident into description. Ossian's was more limited; but the region within which it chiefly exerted itself was the highest of all, the region of the pathetic and sublime.

We must not imagine, however, that Ossian's battles consist only of general indistinct description. Such beautiful incidents are sometimes introduced, and the circumstances of the persons slain so much diversified, as show that he could have embellished his military scenes with an abundant variety of particulars, if his genius had led him to dwell upon them. "One man is stretched in the dust of his native land; he fell, where often he had spread the feast, and often raised the voice of the harp." The maid of Inistore is introduced, in a moving apostrophe, as weeping for another; and a third, "as rolled in the dust he lifted his faint eyes to the king," is remembered and mourned by Fingal as the friend of Agandecca. The blood pouring from the wound of one who is slain by night, is heard, "hissing on the half-extinguished oak,” which had been kindled for giving light: another, climbing a tree, to escape from his foe, is pierced by his spear from behind; "shrieking, panting he fell; whilst moss and withered branches pursue his fall, and strew the blue arms of Gaul." Never was a finer picture drawn of the ardour of two youthful warriors than the following: "I saw Gaul in his armour, and my soul was mixed with his: for the fire of the battle was in his eyes; he looked to the foe with joy. We spoke the words of friendship in secret; and