58 



men of that handicraft poetry, which by some taste in the arts of 

 joining and gluing, of dovetaiUng and varnishing, may be formed 

 from the membra disjecta of other poets. No draught from Helicon, 

 or inspiration from Urania is necessary to the artificer. He is the 

 poet that is made, not born — an image of clay without the prome- 

 thean fire — one of the servum pecus of Horace, not the vales egregiiis 

 of Juvenal. 



Cui non sit publica vena. 

 Qui nihil expositum soleat deducere, nee qui 

 Communi feriat carmen triviale moneta. 



Jcv. Sat. viL 53. 



Not HE, the bard of every age and clime. 

 Of genius fruitful and of soul sublime. 

 Who from the glowing mint of fancy pours 

 No spurious metal fused from common ores. 

 But gold, to matchless purity refined. 

 And Btamp'd with all the godhead in his mind. 



GlFFOOD. 



Doctor Graham, as well as Sir John Sinclair's critic in the Literary 

 Journal, thinks it incredible, that Macpherson could be the artificer 

 of his curious poetical mosaic work. He expatiates on the univer- 

 sity education of Macpherson : " his mind," says he, " was enriched 

 with the stores of ancient and modern literature; he was familiarized 

 from an early period of life to the modes of acting, and thinking, 

 and expressing himself, which characterize the scholar of the present 

 times. That a person of such education, and of such habits of think- 

 ing, should so completely divest himself of all his previous acquisi- 

 tions in literature and science, and of every idea rendered familiar to 

 him by long use ; and that he should be able to write with uniform 

 consistency, in the character of a person who is supposed to have lived 

 fourteen hundred years ago, and in a state of society so very diflfe- 



