ON THE LANGUAGE 



the oldest inhabitants, of the simplest manners, and who are incapabie 

 either of writing or reading, having been taught them by their fathers in 

 early life, as their fathers had in like manner received them from a long line 

 of progenitors through an immemorial period. These poems, or frag- 

 ments of poems, have in various instances been taken down in the original 

 Gaelic, from the mouths of the venerable reciters, by persons of the great- 

 est respectability, many of them appointed for this purpose by the Society 

 I am now speaking of, and on being compared with each other, and with 

 Macpherson's version, have been found to possess a close and literal agree- 

 ment, in many instances through a range of some hundreds of lines, par- 

 ticularly in the important poems of Caricthura and Fingal. While, to 

 enable the public to form a fuller judgment upon the subject, and to free 

 themselves from every charge of prejudice, the committee, in their very 

 excellent report, have not only given an unmutilated copy of their corres- 

 pondence, but extensive specimens of the original Gaelic itself, together 

 with a new and verbal translation as well as Mr. Macpherson's version. 



Against such evidence it is impossible to shyt our eyes ; and, admitting 

 it, we must conclude with the committee, that, though Mr. Macpherson 

 may have taken occasional liberties with the text from which he trans- 

 lated, omitted some passages, and supplied others that were perhaps 

 lost, yet that the poetry called Ossianic is genuine ; that it was common, 

 and in great abundance ; that it was peculiarly striking and impressive, 

 and in a high degree eloquent, tender, and subhme. Of the epoch in 

 which Ossian flourished we can form a tolerable guess ; for, with occa- 

 sional references to several of the earlier Roman emperors, and especially 

 to Caracalla, the son of Severus, who by Ossian is called Caracal, we 

 find through the whole of his accredited poems a total unacquaintance 

 with the Christian religion ; and hence he can scarcely be allowed to have 

 lived earlier than in the second, or later than in the third or fourth century 

 of the Christian era. So that the poems of Ossian must be of an anti- 

 quity not less by three or four centuries than the descent of Caesar upon 

 the British coast. And consequently we have at this moment a living 

 proof of the existence of traditionary poems of the highest pretensions to 

 genius, sublimity, and regularity of structure, that have been kept afloat 

 in the memories of difl?erent generations for upwards of a thousand years, 

 and some of them with but few variations, or loss of their original inte- 

 grity. 



To account, in some degree, for this striking and isolated fact, we 

 must, in the first place, recollect, that these poems are strictly national ; 

 and, by a perpetual appeal to national passions and feelings, must have 

 deeply interested every one who heard them in their preservation. Se- 

 condly, we know from the writings of Juhus Cassar, that the British 

 druids, and consequently the British bards, on his landing, were em- 

 bodied into distinct colleges, subject to a discipline of rigid study, and 

 compelled to commit to memory so great an extent of verses, that many 

 of them required not less than twenty years to complete this part of their 

 education ; it being held impious to record sacred poems in written cha- 

 racters, or to transmit them in any other way than by tradition from race 

 to race. And, lastly, it should not be forgotten that poetry constituted 

 the noblest science of these early times, and that the highest honour a 

 hero could receive was to be celebrated in deathless verse. To die un- 

 lamented by a bard, was deemed, indeed, so great a misfortune as even 

 to disturb the ghosts of the deceased in another state. " They wander," 



