96 



Not contented with telling us once that " a star dim twinkled 

 through his form," he informs us again that — 



"A red star with twinkling beam looked ihrough his floating hair" — and again, that "a 

 red star looked through the plumes of his helmet" — once more he says, "thy form is like a 

 watery cloud, when we see the stars behind it with their weeping eyes." 



Even his metaphysical ideas are obtruded upon us again and 

 again : 



" Pleasant is the joy of grief. Jt is like the shower of spring, when it softens the branch 

 of the oak, and the young leaf lifts its green head." — C arrickthura. " The joy of grief belongs 

 to Ossian amidst his dark brown years." — Temora, book vii. Fingal commands Ossian to 

 " raise to joy his grief," viz : the king of Lochlin's.— Fingal, book v. The son of Semo " saw 

 Fingal victorious, and mixed his joy with grief." — Id. The blue-eyed son of Semo said to 

 Carril, " send thou the night away in song; and give the Joy of grief." — Fingal, book i. 



" The joy of grief," says Laing, "is an abstract and refined ex- 

 pression of the pleasure with which we dwell on fictitious distress ; an 

 idea infinitely too complex for a barbarian, but a subject much can- 

 vassed at the time both by Burke and Smith. The expression is 

 more poetical than just; the satisfaction arising from fictitious wo 

 may amount to pleasure, but can never constitute positive joy. But 

 ' the joy of grief is an expression of curious felicity, which it is 

 impossible to translate with the same energy into another language." 

 Accordingly the translator into Gaelic has failed in rendering this 

 expression, Tha solas ann tuireadh. " Solas," says Laing, "is literally 

 solatium, solace; tuireadh, a request, a dirge, sorrow, is derived from 

 tuirse, tired ;* but the question would appear an insult to the most 

 credulous understanding, whether Tha solas ann tuireadh was an ex- 

 pression used by Ossian in the third century, or by Macpherson, 

 unable to give an adequate expression of the joy of grief." 



* Lloyd's Preface, translated in Nicholson's Irish Hist. Lib. 



