IDCRATION OF THE SOUL. 



375 



and constituting, so far as it goes, one of the most important and authen- 

 tic documents we possess. These poor people," says he, are under a 

 dark night in things relating to religion, to be sure, the tradition of it : yet 

 they believe a God and immortality without the help of metaphysics ; for 

 they say there is a great king who made them, who dwells m a glorious 

 country to the southward of them, and that the souls of the good shall go 

 thither, where they shall hve again."* And it is upon the faith of this 

 description that Mr. Pope drew up that admirable and well known pic- 

 ture of the same tradition, that occurs in the first epistle of his Essay on 

 Man, and is known to every one. 



Lo ! the poor Indian, whose untutor'd mind 



Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind : 



His soul proud science never taught to stray 



Far as the solar walk or milky way ; 

 . Yet simjde nature to his hojte has t-iven 



p Beyond the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heaven: 



I Some safer world in depth of woods embrac'd, 



[ Som^ happier island in the watery waste ; 



Where slaves once more their native land behold. 



No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold. 



The tradition which describes the hades, or invisible world, as seated in 

 the clouds, was chiefly common to the Celtic tribes, and particularly to 

 that which at an early age peopled North Britain, it is by far the most 

 refined and picturesque idea that antiquity has offered upon the subject, 

 and which has consequently been productive, not only of the most sublime, 

 but of the most pathetic descriptions to which the general tradition has 

 given rise under any form. The Celtic bards are full of this imagery ^ and 

 it is hence a chief characteristic in the genuine productions of Ussian, 

 which, in consequence, assume a still higher importance as historical 

 records than as fragments of exquisite poetry. Let me, in proof of this, 

 quote his fine delineation of the spirit of Crugal from a passage in the 

 second book of Fingal, one of his best authenticated poems,! premising 

 that the importance of the errand, which is to warn his friends, " the sons 

 of green Erin, ' of impending destruction, and to advise them to save 

 themselves by retreat, sufficiently justifies the apparition. " A dark red 

 stream of fire comes down from the hill. Crugal sat upon the beam : he 

 that lately ell by the hand of Swaren striving in the battle of heroes. Hi& 

 face is like the beam of the setting moon : his robes are of the clouds of 

 the hill: his eyes are hke two decaying flames. Dark is the wound on 

 his breast. The stars dim-twinkled through his form ; and his voice was 

 like the sound of a distant stream. Dim and in tears he stood, and 

 stretched his pale hand over the hero. Faintly he raised his feeble voice, 

 like the gale of the reedy Lego. 'My ghost, O Connal! is on my native 

 hills, but my corse is on the sands of Ulhn. Thou shait never talk with 

 Crugal, nor find his lone steps on the heath. 1 am light as the blast of 

 Cromla, and I move like the shadow of mist. Connal, son of Colgar ; 

 I see the dark cloud of death. It hovers over the plains of Lena. The 

 sons of green Erin shall fall. Remove from the field of ghosts.' Like 

 the darkened moon, he retired in the midst of the whistling blast." 



Let us take another very brief but very beautiful example. " Trenmor 



* Clarkson's Life of Wm. Penn, vol. i. p. 391. 



t *»ee Report of the Committee of the Highland Society of Scotland appointed to inquire 

 into the nature and authenticity of the Poems of Ossian, diawn up, according to the direc- 

 tions of the Comnaittee, bv Henry Mackenzie, Esq. its Convener or Chairmaa, p. 153, and 

 pp. 190—260, 



