90 



"By many," says Shaw, "it hath been said that the similes of Ossian 

 are taken from so remote a period of society, as to be a strong proof 

 of the antiquity of the poem. I grant the similes in general are from 

 nature. And why ? Because the country described as the scene of 

 action at this day, and its inhabitants, are in some degree but emerg- 

 ing from a state of nature. * * * * ^^y Englishman may go 

 down, and see those phenomena in the elements and face of the coun- 

 try ; of which he may lay up a number, and write when he comes 

 home, poetry of the same nature. This indeed has already been 

 done at home, without the trouble of travelling."* 



True, we need not travel to the Highlands to find similes from 

 nature, nor was it necessary for Macpherson to put himself to the 

 trouble and expense of such a journey for such a purpose, since he 

 had similes enough ready prepared in his library, some of which he 

 might long have sought for in vain, either in echoing Morven, or in 

 "the green vallied Erin, when it shakes its mountains from sea to 

 sea." Happily, cold-hearted critics like ourselves, may say, nature 

 does not now indulge the bards of Erin with earthquakes, to supply 

 them with similes and poetic imagery ! 



Considering the paucity of Macpherson 's ideas and original 

 images, it is truly astonishing how his poems ever acquired any 



* Shaw formed a trae estimate of Macpherson's poetry, when he wrote the following 

 passage : " I remember when I travelled that country (the Highlands) three years ago, to 

 have sat down on a hill, and the scene being favourable, in a poetic mood, I jingled together 

 upon paper, with suitable invented Gaelic names, the epithets of blue-eyed, meek-eyed, 

 mildly-looking, white-bosomed, dark-brown locks, noble, generous, valiant, tears, spears, darts, 

 hearts, harts, quivers, bows, arrows, helmets, steel, streams, torrents, noble deeds, other times, 

 bards, chiefs, storms, songs, &c., and produced a little poem which reads pretty smoothly ; 

 and if I had a mind to publish it, it would be no difficult matter to persuade some people 

 that I had translated it from the Gaelic ; for I might translate a stanza of it into Earse, shew 

 it to the inquisitive, and say I had the rest by me, after which they would never inquire." 



Shaw's Inquiry, pp. 58, 59. 



