Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts.djvu/138

 and human life than the ancients? the English than the Chaldæans, or than the Tartars? Does English theology contain the recent discoveries?

Ossian feels and asserts the dignity of the bard. His province is to record the deeds of heroes.

An heroic deed is his star in the night. The simple, impressive majesty of human life as seen through his mists, is that Ossian we know and remember. Who has discovered any higher morality than this? any truer philosophy?—a simple, brave, persevering life adorned with heroic deeds.

The reserved strength of Ossian, and moral superiority to most poets of what is styled a barbarous era, appears in the fact that he can afford to pass over the details of the battle, leaving the heroism to be imagined from what has already been described of the character of the hero, while he hastens to hint at the result. Most heroic poets of a rude period delight mainly in the mere sound of [90]