the veritable writings of James Macpherson, Esq. The ablest opponent of his living reputation was, as we said, Johnson; and the ablest enemy of his posthumous fame has been Macaulay. We are at a loss to understand his animosity to the author of Ossian. Were the Macphersons and Macaulays ever at feud, and did the historian lose his great-great-grandmother in some onslaught made on the Hebrides by the progenitors of the pseudo-Ossian? Macpherson as a man we respect not, and we are persuaded that the greater part of Ossian's Poems can be traced no further than his teeming brain. Nor are we careful to defend his poetry from the common charges of monotony, affectation, and fustian. But we deem Macaulay grossly unjust in his treatment of Macpherson's genius and its results, and can fortify our judgment by that of Sir Walter Scott and Professor Wilson, two men as far superior to the historian in knowledge of the Highlands and of Highland song, and in genuine poetic taste, as they were confessedly in original imagination. The former says, Macpherson was certainly a man of high talents, and his poetic powers are honourable to his country.' Wilson, in an admirable paper in Blackwood for November 1839, while admitting many faults in Ossian, eloquently proclaims the presence in his strains of much of the purest, most pathetic, and most sublime poetry, instancing the 'Address to the Sun' as equal to anything in Homer or Milton. Both these great writers have paid Macpherson a higher compliment still,-they have imitated him, and the speeches of Allan Macaulay (a far greater genius than his namesake), Ranald MacEagh, and Elspeth MacTavish, in the Waverley Novels,' and such articles by Christopher North as 'Cottages,' 'Hints for the Holidays,' and a 'Glance at Selby's Ornithology,' are all coloured by familiarity and fellowfeeling with Ossian's style. Best of all, the Highlanders as a nation have accepted Ossian as their bard; he is as much the poet of Morven as Burns of Coila, and it is as hopeless to dislodge the one from the Highland as the other from the Lowland heart. The true way to learn to appreciate Ossian's poetry is not to hurry, as Macaulay seems to have done, in a steamer from Glasgow to Oban, and thence to Ballachulish, and thence through Glencoe, (mistaking a fine lake for a 'sullen pool' on his way, and ignoring altogether its peculiar features of grandeur,) and thence to Inverness or Edinburgh; but it is to live for years-as Macpherson did while writing Ossian, and Wilson also did to some extent-under the shadow of the mountains,—to wander through lonely moors amidst drenching mists and rains, to hold trysts with thunder-storms on the summit of savage hills,—to bathe after nightfall in dreary tarns,-to lie over the ledge and dip one's fingers in the spray of cataracts,—to plough a solitary path into the heart of forests, and to sleep and dream for hours amidst their sunless glades,—to meet on twilight hills the apparition of the winter moon rising over snowy wastes,-to descend by her ghastly light precipices where the eagles are sleeping,—and, returning home, to be haunted by night-visions of mightier mountains, wilder desolations, and giddier descents ;-experience somewhat like this is necessary to form a true 'Child of the Mist,' and to give the full capacity for sharing in or appreciating the shadowy, solitary, pensive, and magnificent spirit which tabernacles in Ossian's poetry. Never, at least, can we forget how, in our boyhood, while feeling, but quite unable to express, the emotions which were suggested by the bold shapes of mountains resting against the stars, mirrored from below in lakes and wild torrents, and quaking sometimes in concert with the quaking couch of the half-slumbering earthquake, the poems of Ossian served to give our thoughts an expression which they could not otherwise have found-how they at once strengthened and consolidated enthusiasm, and are now regarded with feelings which, wreathed around earliest memories and the strongest fibres of the heart, no criticism can ever weaken or destroy. OSSIAN'S ADDRESS TO THE SUN. I feel the sun, O Malvina!-leave me to my rest. Perhaps they may come to my dreams; I think I hear a feeble voice! The beam of heaven delights to shine on the grave of Carthon: I feel it warm around. O thou that rollest above, round as the shield of my fathers! Whence are thy beams, O sun! thy everlasting light? Thou comest forth in thy awful beauty; the stars hide themselves in the sky; the moon, cold and pale, sinks in the western wave; but thou thyself movest alone. Who can be a companion of thy course? The oaks of the mountains fall; the mountains themselves decay with years; the ocean shrinks and grows again; the moon herself is lost in heaven, but thou art for ever the same, rejoicing in the brightness of thy course. When the world is dark with tempests, when thunder rolls and lightning flies, thou lookest in thy beauty from the clouds, and laughest at the storm. But to Ossian thou lookest in vain, for he beholds thy beams no more; whether thy yellow hair flows on the eastern clouds, or thou tremblest at the gates of the west. But thou art perhaps, like me, for a season; thy years will have an end. Thou shalt sleep in thy clouds careless of the voice of the morning. Exult then, O sun, in the strength of thy youth! Age is dark and unlovely; it is like the glimmering light of the moon when it shines through broken clouds, and the mist is on the hills: the blast of the north is on the plain; the traveller shrinks in the midst of his journey. DESOLATION OF BALCLUTHA. 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 its head. Desolate is the dwelling of Moina; silence is in the house of her fathers. Raise the song of mourning, O bards! Why dost thou build the over the land of strangers. They have but fallen before us: for one day we must fall. hall, son of the winged days? towers to-day: yet a few years, and the blast of the desert comes; it howls in thy empty court, and whistles round thy half-worn shield. And let the blast of the desert come! we shall be renowned in our day! The mark of my arm shall be in battle; my name in the song of bards. Raise the song, send round the shell: let joy be heard in my hall. When thou, sun of heaven, shalt fail! if thou shalt fail, thou mighty light! if thy brightness is but for a season, like Fingal, our fame shall survive thy beams. Such was the song of Fingal in the day of his joy. FINGAL AND THE SPIRIT OF LODA. Night came down on the sea; Roma's bay received the ship. A rock bends along the coast with all its echoing wood. On the top is the circle of Loda, the mossy stone of power! A narrow plain spreads beneath, covered with grass and aged trees, which the midnight winds, in their wrath, had torn from the shaggy rock. The blue course of a stream is there! the lonely blast of ocean pursues the thistle's beard. The flame of three oaks arose: the feast is spread around: but the soul of the king is sad, for Carric-thura's chief distressed. The wan, cold moon, rose in the east; sleep descended on the youths! Their blue helmets glitter to the beam; the fading fire decays. But sleep did not rest on the king: he rose in the midst of his arms, and slowly ascended the hill, to behold the flame of Sarno's tower. The flame was dim and distant, the moon hid her red face in the east. A blast came from the mountain, on its wings was the spirit of Loda. He came to his place His eyes in his terrors, and shook his dusky spear. appear like flames in his dark face; his voice is like distant thunder. Fingal advanced his spear in night, and raised his voice on high. Son of night, retire: call thy winds, and fly! Why dost thou come to my presence, with thy shadowy arms? Do I fear thy gloomy form, spirit of dismal Loda? Weak is thy shield of clouds: feeble is that meteor, thy sword! The blast rolls them together; and thou thyself art lost. Fly from my presence, son of night! Call thy winds, and fly! Dost thou force me from my place? replied the hollow voice. The people bend before me. I turn the battle in the field of the brave. I look on the nations, and they vanish: my nostrils pour the blast of death. I come abroad on the winds: the tempests are before my face. But my dwelling is calm, above the clouds; the fields of my rest are pleasant. Dwell in thy pleasant fields, said the king; let Comhal's son be forgot. Do my steps ascend, from my hills, into thy peaceful plains? Do I meet thee, with a spear, on thy cloud, spirit of dismal Loda? Why then dost thou frown on me? Why shake thine airy spear? Thou frownest in vain: I never fled from the mighty in war. And shall the sons of the wind frighten the king of Morven? No: he knows the weakness of their arms! Fly to thy land, replied the form: receive the wind, and fly! The blasts are in the hollow of my hand: the course of the storm is mine. The king of Sora is my son, he bends at the storm of my power. His battle is around Carric-thura; and he will prevail! Fly to thy land, son of Comhal, or feel my flaming wrath! He lifted high his shadowy spear! He bent forward his dreadful height. Fingal, advancing, drew his sword; |