THE OSSIANIC LANDSCAPE 115 



Macpherson had previously published some English 

 verse of little merit and which attracted no notice. 

 But the appearance of his Ossianic translations at 

 once made him famous. The Poems of Ossian not 

 only became popular in this country, but were trans- 

 lated into the more important languages of the 

 Continent. 



In studying the landscape of Macpherson's Ossian 

 we soon learn that it belongs unmistakably to Western 

 Argyleshire, Its union of mountain, glen, and sea 

 removes it at once from the interior to the coast. 

 Even if it had been more or less inaccurately drawn, 

 its prominence and consistency all through the poems 

 would have been remarkable in the productions of 

 a lad of four-and-twenty, who had spent his youth in 

 the inland region of Badenoch, where the scenery is 

 of another kind. But when we discover that the end- 

 less allusions to topographical features are faithful 

 delineations, which give the very spirit and essence of 

 the scenery, we feel sure that whether they were 

 written in the eighteenth century or in the third, they 

 display a poetic genius of no mean order. 



The grandeur and gloom of the Highland moun- 

 tains, the spectral mists that sweep round the crags, 

 the roar of the torrents, the gleam of sunlight on moor 

 and lake, the wail of the breeze among the cairns of 

 the dead, the unspeakable sadness that seems to brood 

 over the landscape whether the sky be clear or clouded 

 — these features of West Highland scenery were first 

 revealed by Macpherson to the modern world. This 

 revelation quickened the change of feeling, already 

 begun, in regard to the prevailing horror of moun- 



