6a 



He endeavoured to form a statue of surpassing beauty, but failed in 

 the execution. It proved to be the monster with the horse's head 

 and the fish's tail, clothed with rich and gaudy plumage, contributed 

 by all the birds of the air. 



Doctor Graham assumes it as a fact not to be contested, that 

 Macpherson's Ossian is a collection of super-excellent poetry ; that it 

 is perfectly inimitable ; that the loftiest flights of Pindar, and the 

 sustained sublimities of Homer, fall far below the elevated soarings 

 of the Caledonian swan. Such extravagant panegyric amuses and 

 disgusts by turns. That the poetry has beauties we do not deny ; 

 but that they are transplanted from a foreign soil, we should think 

 apparent to every unprejudiced judge. Notwithstanding, Doctor 

 Graham, and the critics of his school, labour industriously to shew 

 that they are the indigenous growth of the Highlands, and that cer- 

 tain coincidences both of thought and expression, may be traced in 

 authors who lived in ages and countries most remote from each other. 

 There are passages in Homer, and in the Sacred Scriptures, which have 

 a mutual resemblance, and yet no one will pretend that the one is an 

 original, and the other an imitation. To illustrate this, the words of the 

 Patriarch Jacob, " Ye will bring down my grey hairs with sorrow to 

 the grave," are compared with those of Priam, lamenting for his son 

 Hector, ov fi a^og o^v KaTOiaerai a'idoQ ektw, " my sharp sorrow 

 for whom will bring me down to the grave." A more apt illustra- 

 tion might have been selected. The thought in both passages is un- 

 questionably similar. It is one of those common-place ideas which 

 are to be found in all languages. But the dress and imagery in 

 which it is arrayed in the Scriptures, make it peculiarly their own. 

 In Homer, grief is the agent. In Scripture, the agents are the 

 Patriarch's own sons, a consideration which must add poignancy to 

 his grief, and heighten our sympathy. The grey hairs present us 



