Page:Poems of Ossian.djvu/39

Rh and abstract terms. Our poets sing broadly of manhood and womanhood, of unnamed landscapes and the picturesque in nature. Had Macpherson expanded his material, his work could hardly fail to contain some such expressions. His translations, on the contrary, remain true to the powers of their original language. In Gaelic there are no words for "landscape" or for "picturesque;" the ideas, as in all primitive tongues, are concrete, and Ossian sings only of named objects, of "car-borne Cuthullin" and "blue-eyed Comala," of "green Erin of streams" and of "woody Morven." Allusions and speech both, in these poems, suit ancient Celtic times and no other period known to history. The wind whistles through open dwellings, and lifts the long locks of a people living by the chase; and the greatest admiration is bestowed on bodily strength, courage, and warlike qualities; while the language supplies its lack of terms by the abundant use of figure.

Macpherson was charged with having borrowed from the Bible; this, apparently, upon no stronger evidence than the fact that several passages of his translations fell little short of the sublimity of passages in Holy Writ. The charge, indeed, might have presented some show of reason, had his work betrayed any traces of the atmosphere of a southern clime, or the details of an advanced