ideas and images is tenfold more striking and conclusive against the 

 authenticity of the poems, than the absence of modern ornaments 

 would be favourable to its establishment. It demonstrates that the 

 author did not write in the age nor in the scenes with which he pre- 

 tends to be familiar. He speaks of the sun and moon, of seas, rivers, 

 and lakes, of mountains and valleys, and gives us a superabundance 

 of rainbows and poetic mists. But where are the badgers and the 

 otters of the Fenian Tales ; and the bears and the wolves ? Of these 

 there were numbers in the Highlands, and also squirrels, (as we are 

 informed in Sir John Sinclair's third volume, p. 523,) though now 

 nearly extinct, near Cona, the Fingallian river. " The country being 

 at that time overrun with woods, afforded shelter to wolves and bears, 

 enemies to the human race, and they had no other place of safety for 

 their residence, but either in their caves or upon the tops of the 

 hills," (Id. p. 539.) Those ferocious bears of Caledonia, and the 

 wild bulls with thick manes, of which Martial and Plutarch speak, 

 (Camden, Scotland, p. 31,) would have supplied some poetic pic- 

 tures, and suggested themes of heroic enterprize. There is indeed 

 one lachrymose reference to a bull in the first book of Fingal. "But, 

 ah ! why ever lowed the bull on Golbun's echoing heath. They saw 

 him leaping like snow ;" and again, in the second book, we are told 

 of a division of " the herd on the hill." But we read of none of 

 those grand forays, which, in succeeding ages, became so common 

 that no Highland chieftain could say of his neighbours, what Achil- 

 ^ les says of the Trojans : 



Ov yap ttwttot' tjuoc |3ovc ijXoirov, ovSt fjiiv 'nrnovg, 



II. «. 1. 154. 



Such exploits would have been unworthy of the civilization and re- 

 finement of Ossian's heroes, though it seems they never planted a grain 



