^9 



ing hoofs; and that he did not make Sulinsifadda or Dusronnal speak 

 and prophesy Hke their prototype Xanthus, in Homer. Ross endea- 

 vours to obviate some of the objections which have been made to the 

 authenticity and propriety of the description, but with no success. 

 " The minuteness of the description," he says, " can be considered 

 as no objection whatever, as the whole speech," (though broken — 

 faltering — slow — and almost the length of a moderate sermon,) 

 " may have been delivered in the space of one minute and a 

 half of time !" " And how did Garrick speak the soliloquy last 

 night. Oh ! against all rules, my Lord, most achronometrically . 

 He suspended his voice a dozen times, three seconds, and three-fifths, 

 by a stop-watch, my Lord, each time." Admirable critic ! We 

 hope for the sake of the son of Arno, that Swaran had not Mr. Ross's 

 stop-watch, and that he was not addicted to the sin of criticism. 



Macpherson, 485. 



The field echoes from wing to wing, 



As a hundred hammers that rise 



By turns, on the red son of the furnace. 



Ross, 



The cry of battle from wing to wing, 1 



The roaring bloody hot encounter. 

 Like a hundred hammers wildly beating 

 Successive sparks from the red son of the fur- 

 nace. 



Here again, we see the plainest marks of imitation in the lines of 

 Ross. The translator into Gaelic seems to have entertained the com- 

 mon idea, that to amplify is to improve. Hence he gives us a long 

 string of useless adjuncts. The encounter is roaring and bloody, and 

 hoi of course. But why are the hammers made to beat wildly ? The 

 rising by turns of Macpherson, gives us abetter idea of the measured 

 cadence of hammer and sledge, with their alternate strokes. The 

 word successive is clogging and superfluous. The original of the com- 

 parison itself is to be found in the Irish poem, )^0)'b ^<t5tiu)r 



VOL. xvr. 



H 



