A famous book,
Macpherson's Ossian, carried in the last century this vein like a
flood of lava through Europe. I am not going to criticise
Macpherson's Ossian here. Make the part of what is forged, modern,
tawdry, spurious, in the book, as large as you please; strip
Scotland, if you like, of every feather of borrowed plumes which on
the strength of Macpherson's Ossian she may have stolen from that
vetus et major Scotia, the true home of the Ossianic poetry, Ireland;
I make no objection. But there will still be left in the book a
residue with the very soul of the Celtic genius in it, and which has
the proud distinction of having brought this soul of the Celtic
genius into contact with the genius of the nations of modern Europe,
and enriched all our poetry by it. Woody Morven, and echoing Sora,
and Selma with its silent halls!--we all owe them a debt of
gratitude, and when we are unjust enough to forget it, may the Muse
forget us! Choose any one of the better passages in Macpherson's
Ossian and you can see even at this time of day what an apparition of
newness and power such a strain must have been to the eighteenth
century:-
'I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they were desolate. The fox
looked out from the windows, the rank grass of the wall waved round
her head.
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