79 



Denis M'Namara, a school-master of the county of Water ford, 1755, 

 '* who wrote a mock ^neid in Irish, in which there are some hnes 

 by no means inferior to any of Virgil's. The shout of Charon, as 

 described by the Irish bard, is, perhaps, superior to the Cyclops' roar 

 of the Mantuan poet." Again he speaks of M'Auliffe, a blacksmith, 

 near Glanmire, county of Corke, author of some poems, in which "he 

 describes the river Funshan in a storm, where his " ^tjctti goctic 

 J<t)T))ft <t 5Ctl)C)0ni ti<t "OCOT)" is not inferior to Homer's descrip- 

 tion of the rolling waves, in the 4th book of the Iliad." 



Blair, endeavouring to support the authenticity of the poems by 

 internal evidence, says, "they have all the characters of antiquity im- 

 pressed upon them ;" he should have subjoined, recast in a modern 

 mould, and with new characters impressed upon them, which anti- 

 quity would disown. " The heroes," says he, " prepare their own 

 repasts." — Yes, this is hinted at, but Macpherson dared not venture, 

 as the father of poets has done, minutely to describe the process of 

 cutting the throat, of flaying, of separating the joints, and fixing 

 them on spits. He was afraid to come down from his bombast, or 

 depart from his generalities, to give us a true picture of the manners 

 of his adopted age. We can learn nothing from him unless it be in 

 a note, in what mode the repast was prepared, though we learn it 

 distinctly from other sources. A common culinary operation was 

 beneath the dignity of Macpherson, and perhaps above his powers, 

 without his degenerating into meanness. We think some of those 

 damsels whom he dresses so frequently in mail, would have been as 

 well, as naturally, and as agreeably to the manners of the age, em- 

 ployed in hospitable cares at home, as in wandering to secret caves, 

 and indulging a whining sentimentality with blue-eyed heroes. 



Again, says Blair, "no foreign ornaments are hunted after;" and 

 hence an argument in favour of the antiquity of the poems. But 



