A CRITICAL

DISSERTATION

ΟΝ ΤΗΕ

POEMS OF OSSIAN,

A

THE

SON OF FINGAL.

MONG the monuments remaining of the

ancient ftate of nations, few are more valuable than their poems or fongs. Hiftory, when it treats of remote and dark ages, is feldom very inftructive. The beginnings of society, in every country, are involved in fabulous confufion; and though they were not, they would furnish few events worth recording. But, in every period of fociety, human manners are a curious fpectacle; and the moft natural pictures of ancient manners are exhibited in the ancient poems of nations. Thefe prefent to us, what is much more valuable than the history of such tranfactions as a rude age can afford, The hiftory

of

of human imagination and paffion. They make

acquainted with the notions and feelings of our fellow-creatures in the moft artless ages; discovering what objects they admired, and what pleasures they purfued, before thofe refinements of fociety had taken place, which enlarge indeed, and diverfify the tranfactions, but difguife the manners of mankind.

BESIDES this merit, which ancient poems have with philofophical obfervers of human nature, they have another with perfons of tafte. They promise fome of the highest beauties of poetical writing. Irregular and unpolished we may expect the productions of uncultivated ages to be; but abounding, at the fame time, with that enthusiafin, that vehemence and fire, which are the foul of poetry. For many circumftances of those times which we call barbarous, are favourable to the poetical fpirit. That state, in which human nature fhoots wild and free, though unfit for other improvements, certainly encourages the high exertions of fancy and paffion.

In the infancy of focieties, men live fcattered and difperfed, in the midft of folitary rural fcenes, where the beauties of nature are their

chief entertainment.

They meet with many

They meet

objects, to them new and ftrange; their wonder

and

and furprize are frequently excited, and by the fudden changes of fortune occurring in their unfettled ftate of life, their paffions are raised to the utmoft, their paffions have nothing to reftrain them their imagination has nothing to check it. They difplay themselves to one another without difguife: and converfe and act in the uncovered fimplicity of nature. As their feelings are ftrong, fo their language, of itfelf, affumes a poetical turn. Prone to exaggerate, they describe every thing in the strongest colours, which of course renders their fpeech picturefque and figurative. Figurative language owes its rife chiefly to two causes; to the want of proper names for objects, and to the influence of imagination and paffion over the form of expreffion. Both these causes concur in the infancy of fociety. Figures are commonly confidered as artificial modes of fpeech, devifed by orators and poets, after the world had advanced to a refined ftate. The contrary of this is the truth. Men never have used fo many figures of ftyle, as in thofe rude ages, when, besides the power of a warm imagination to suggest lively images, the want of proper and precise terms for the ideas they would exprefs, obliged them to have recourse to circumlocution, metaphor, comparison, and all those substituted forms of expreffion, which give a poetical air to language.

guage. An American chief, at this day,pharangues at the head of his tribe, in a more bold metaphorical ftyle, than a modern European would adventure to use in an Epic poem. 1 to

IN the progrefs of fociety, the genius and manners of men undergo a change more favourable to accuracy than to fprightlinefs and fublimity. As the world advances, the understand ing gains ground upon the imagination; the understanding is more exercifed; the imagina tion, lefs. Fewer objects occur that are new or furprizing. Men apply themselves to trace the caufes of things; they correct and refine one another; they fubdue or disguise their paffions; they form their exterior manners upon one uniq form ftandard of politeness and civility. Hu man nature is pruned according to method and rule. Language advances from fterility to capi oufnefs, and at the fame time, from fervour and enthusiasm, to correctness and precifion. Style becomes more chafte; but lefs animated. progrefs of the world in this refpect resembles the progrefs of age in man. The powers of ima gination are most vigorous and predominant in youth; thofe of the understanding ripen more flowly, and often attain not to their maturity, till the imagination begin to flag. Hence, poc try, which is the child of imagination, is frequently

The

quently moft glowing and animated in the firft ages of society. As the ideas of our youth are remembered with a peculiar pleasure on account of their liveliness and vivacity; fo the most ancient poems have often proved the greatest favourites of nations.

POETRY has been faid to be more ancient than profe and however paradoxical fuch an affertion may feem, yet, in a qualified fenfe, it is true. Men certainly never converfed with one another in regular numbers; but even their ordinary language would, in ancient times, for the reasons before affigned, approach to a poetical ftyle; and the firft compofitions tranfmitted to pofterity, beyond doubt, were, in a literal fenfe, poems; that is, compofitions in which imagination had the chief hand, formed into fome kind of numbers, and pronounced with a mufical modulation or tone. Mufic or fong has been found coæval with fociety among the moft barbarous nations. The only The only fubjects which could prompt men, in their first rude state, to utter their thoughts in compofitions of any length, were fuch as naturally affumed the tone of poetry; praises of their gods, or of their ancestors; commemorations of their own warlike exploits; or lamentations over their misfortunes. eit al magani to

And