'306 NOVEMBER. 



the wind of autumn. Am I told that it is merely a 

 pleasant, modern fiction? What then? If so, it 

 is one of the pleasantest fictions that ever were 

 wrought; and the man who made it, one of the 

 happiest geniuses. For years did he toil to acquire 

 the art and the name of a poet ; but in vain. His 

 conceptions were meagre, his style monotonous and 

 common-place ; and through the multitude of verses 

 which he has left, we look in vain for aught which 

 might justify the manufacture of them : but, in a 

 happy hour, he burst at once into a most original 

 style of poetry into a language which shows not 

 symptoms of feeling, but melts and glows with it 

 into poetic imagery; which is not scattered sparingly 

 and painfully, but with a full, a free, and an un- 

 wearied hand. If this be true, it is wonderful ; but 

 I shall choose not to believe it true. I shall choose 

 to think of Ossian as the ancient and veritable bard, 

 and Macpherson as the fortunate fellow who found 

 his scattered lays, and who perhaps added links and 

 amendments (to use the word in a parliamentary 

 sense) of his own. Whatever be the opinion of 

 fickle fashion, it is a book pre-eminently fitted for 

 the November fire-side : unrivalled in grapic touches 

 which bring the character of the season before you, 

 and serve to touch the heart with an unworldly ten- 

 derness, a boon of no little consequence in these 

 money-getting and artificial days. We have not 

 the Alpine glooms and lonely majesty of Ossian's 

 hilly land ; but we are now surrounded by precisely 

 the melancholy images in which he delights. We 



