Macpherson, 218. 



Thou art like the snow on the heath. 

 Thy hair is the mist of Cromla 

 When it curls on the hill, 

 When it shines to the beam of the west. 



Ross. 



Thou art like the snow on the heath. 

 Thy ringlets are like the mists of Cromla 

 When it climbs the side of the hill, 

 In the beams of the western sun. 



Ross is cruel in his reprehension of these hnes of Macpherson. 

 "This simile," he observes, " is one of the most elegant and beautiful 

 to be met with in the works of any poet. In the original it is inimi- 

 tably fine. The translation of Mr. Macpherson is a mass of absolute 

 confusion, unlike to any thing in the compass of nature. The hair 

 is mist. That mist one while curls on a hill, and again, shines to the 

 beam of the west." What then ? Where is the confusion ? When 

 he says the hair is mist, he means like mist, and every one under- 

 stands the expression thus, as distinctly as if it were introduced in the 

 shape of Ross's formal comparison. What is a metaphor but a brief 

 similitude .'' The one is as incapable as the other of being misunder- 

 stood by any reader of taste. Macpherson's mist does not one while 

 curl and again shine, but wherefore might it not ? It curls and shines 

 at the same time. Ross has given us ringlets instead of hair, judi- 

 ciously. But for a strikingly picturesque word, on which much of the 

 beauty of the description depends, he has substituted another, by 

 which it is impaired. The hair in Macpherson is like mist when it 

 curls ; in Ross when it climbs. Were it bristled up like an angry 

 boar's, or standing on end, "like quills upon the fretful porcupine," it 

 might be compared to climbing mist. But the poet is .speaking of 

 the tresses of the " fairest of women," and assimilates them to the 

 evening mist when it curls on, not climbs up, but pours down, or along 

 the side of a hill, and is gilded by the beams of the setting sun. He 



