Page:Studies of a Biographer 4.djvu/286

 the real thing; only what a Cockney might see through a Scottish mist. But Chateaubriand was content with a 'mountain' in the abstract, and supplied details for himself. Ossian's mountains might be mere scene-painting. When Scott or Wordsworth gave genuine likenesses Ossian's were seen to be intolerable blurs. That made no difference to people who simply wanted what Mr. Ruskin described as the 'mountain gloom.' A vague daub answered the purpose as well as Turner's most powerful drawing of the reality. May we not say the same of the sentiment itself? Was it really specifically Northern, or simply eighteenth century, characteristic of the period, and common to the Germanic and the Latin races? This, indeed, suggests another question. Matthew Arnold argues that the effect of Ossian was due to the specially Celtic sentiment, which survived even through Macpherson's manipulation. Madame de Staël and most contemporaries were indifferent to such niceties. For them the Northern races were a unit; Celt and Scandinavian both lived in the North, and represent bogs and moors and wind-swept seas in general. Gray complained of Mason for mixing Scandinavian scalds with Celtic bards, but the distinction was scarcely recognised