UF 'rm PASSIONS. 



^11 



tioii is well known to every one ; but it cannot be too often repeated, and 

 ought not to be neglected on the present occasion. The picture of his 

 standing on the battlements of Conway Castle, and terrifying the English 

 conqueror with his dying prophecy as the latter was descending the 

 shaggy steep of Snowdon, is exquisite and inimitable. 



On a rock, whose hanghty brow 

 Frowns o'er old Conwaj's foaming flood. 



Robed in the sabl*- garb of wo, 

 With haggard eyes the p(»et stood, 

 (Loose hi.-* beard and hoary air 

 Streamed, like a meteor to the troubled air,) 

 And with a master's hand and prophet's fire 

 Struck the deep sorrows of his tyre. 



The detail of the prophecy is too long for quotation ; but the following 

 fragments, which form its openmg and ending, ought by no means to be 

 omitted. 



Ruin seize thee, ruthless king ! 

 Coniusionon thy banners wait ! 

 Though, lann'd by conquest's crimson wing, 

 They mock the air with idle state ! 

 Heljo, nor hawberk'a twisted mail. 

 Nor e'en thy virtues, tyrant ! shall avail 

 To save thy secret soul from nightly fears- 

 Prom Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears ! 

 ^Fond, inapious man ! think'st thou yon sanguine cloud, 

 Rais'd by thy breath, has quench'd the orb of day ? 

 To-morrf»w he repairs the golden flood. 



And warms the nations with redoubled ray, * 

 Enough for me ! — n itb joy I see 

 The different doom our fates assign. 

 Be thine despair, and sceptre'd care- 

 To triumph and to die are mine. — 



He spoke : and headlong from the mountain's height 



Deep in the roaring tide he plunged to endless night. 



The first of these descriptions is derived from a people of Gothic or 

 Scythian origin, whose ferocity of manners 1 have formerly pointed out, 

 and endeavoured to account for : the second refers to a race of Celts or 

 Cymbrians, for the most part of milder affections, and some tribes of 

 which appear at a very early era of their history, and even in the infancy 

 of civilization, to have evinced a tenderness of sentiment, a fecundity of 

 imagery, and a cultivation of style, that are truly wonderful, and have 

 never been satisfactorily accounted for. And I now particularly allude to 

 the traditional poems of the Highlands and the adjoining isles, so well 

 known from Mr. Macpherson's translation, and occasional interweavings. 

 Such is the elegance and delicacy of taste, as well as sublime genius 

 and national enthusiasm of these singular productions, that Dr. Johnson, 

 as many of us may perhaps recoliect, was to the last an infidel as to their 

 genuineness. The first, however, has been sufficiently ascertdined of late 

 by the indefatigable and valuable exertions of the Highland Society, 

 formed for the express purpose of inquiring into the nature and authenti- 

 city of the poems of Ossian, the Homer of the highlands ; whose report 

 has been pubhshed by Mr. Mackenzie their liberal and enlightened chair- 

 man. They have sufficiently estabhshed the important fact that Ossian 

 is not an imaginary being ; that his name and general history are at this 

 moment preserved by tradition over the whole of the Highlands and the 

 Hebrides ; and thatseveral of his poems, to an extent of many hundred lines, 

 ti9 literally rendered by Macpherson, still live in the memory of many of 



