Page:Poems of Ossian.djvu/40

xxxviii civilisation. Isaiah's images, however, are of corn and spices, of cities and shepherding and lions of the desert. Ossian's, on the other hand, refer to an earlier, hunter stage of society; to the roaring winds and blazing hearths of a colder clime; to grey mists, pale ghosts, and the sheen of the "northern lights."

A similar accusation of having borrowed from Homer might be disposed of by the same reasoning. There are many essential points of difference. One detail only need be noticed; Homer's heroes insult and deface the bodies of their fallen enemies, while the warriors of Ossian mourn over those they have slain. But the whole spirit of the two singers is different. Homer everywhere burns with the vivacity of the Greek nature, while Ossian is uniformly tinged with the sweet melancholy native to his northern hills. The late Alexander Smith argued for the authenticity of these poems from their faithfulness to the character of West Highland landscape. "Wordsworth's verse," he wrote, "does not more completely mirror the Lake Country than do the poems of Ossian the terrible scenery of the Isles."

Notwithstanding these facts, probably in no case in literature have the accusations of plagiarism and forgery descended to so minute details. Perhaps the most curious of the arguments against the