The first book of Temora was published in 1762 among the lesser poems annexed to Fingal. Without undertaking a second expedition to the Highlands, our translator was enabled, in London, by means of his friends, or rather perhaps by the encouragement which his first collection met with, to complete the epic poem of Temora, which was published in eight books, with some additional poems, in 1763. The correspondence with his friends, by whose means this lost epic was retrieved from oblivion, in course of post, would afford the most unexceptionable and convincing proofs of the authenticity of the poem. Neither the inquiries, however, of Dr Blair, so carly as 1764, nor those of the Highland Society at Edinburgh, ever since the year 1797, nor those of Macpherson's executors since his death, have discovered any trace of this suppositious correspondence, in consequence of which the translator collected the broken fragments, and reduced them into their present order; much less of those more correct copies of the original, which he had received and collated after his first publication, when " little more than the opening of the poem had come in regular connection to his hands." Had the second collection received the same encouragement with the first, we may be assured that the Strife of Crona, Inisthona, Cuthullin's War of Possessions, Cathloda, the Maid of Lulan, and others intimated in the notes, would, in some subsequent publication, have branched out, like the Temora, into epic poems; and, according to Johnson, the father of Ossian boasted of two chests more of ancient poetry, which he reserved or suppressed. But it seems that the parallel passages in the first collection had excited suspicion, and Webb, the painter, in a pamphlet entitled Fingal Reclaimed, had detected some of the grosser imitations of Homer. The parallel passages, in the second collection of Ossian's poems, were therefore suppressed; and his resemblance to Homer in his diction, and in the form of his poems, was ascribed to nature, as the original from which both drew their ideas. This consideration was the very reason for producing, instead of suppressing, the parallel passages from other authors; if indeed the resemblance of ideas and of diction was derived from nature, without imitation. The translator, however, assures us, that the present poem, if deficient in certain minutia required by Aristotle, possesses all the essentials of a regular epopea; preserves the three unities entire ; begins (abruptly) in the midst of things, and introduces preceding transactions as episodes arising immediately from the situation of affairs. Unity of action is indeed necessary; but the dramatic unities of time and place, which are preserved in the Temora with such ostentation, are no more essential to an epic poem than to the Tale of a Tub. But our author had improved under the criticisms of the Monthly Review; and the episodes in the Temora, though not branches nor parts of the principal action, are less extraneous than those in Fingal, and less aukwardly introduced. In fact the Temora, which, like every other epic poem constructed in imitation of the Odyssey, begins in the midst of things, reserving the preceding events for an episode, exhibits merely Homer's epic art more dilated than in Fingal, while the imitations, perhaps, are more industriously concealed. TEMORA : AN EPIC POEM. BOOK I. THE blue waves of Erin roll in light. The 1 The blue waves of Erin roll in light. The mountains are covered with day.] The descriptions in Ossian are often transcribed from Macpherson's early poems. The present is from the Hunter. In dazzling light the foaming billows rolled, course of a stream is there. On its banks stood Cairbar of Atha. His spear supports the king: the red eye of his fear is sad. Cormac rises in his soul, with all his ghastly wounds. The grey form of the youth appears in darkness. Blood pours from his airy sides. Cairbar thrice threw his spear on earth. Thrice he stroked his beard. His steps are short. He often stops 3. He tosses 2 Two green hills, with aged oaks, surround a narrow plain. The blue course of a stream is there.] Highlander, iii. 113. Two rising hills, whose brows tall poplars grace, And murmured softly through the underwood. 3 The red eye of his fear is sad---His steps are short. He often stops, &c.] Color ei exsanguis: fædi oculi; citus modo, modo tardus incessus. SALLUST. But Macpherson, in the attitude and actions of Cairbar, had Shakspeare's description of Cardinal Wolsey particularly in view. "Cormac rises in his soul with all his ghastly wounds.---Cairbar thrice threw his spear on earth. Thrice he stroaked his beard. His steps are short. He often stops. He tosses his sinewy arms. He is like a cloud in the desert, varying its form to every blast." Hen. VIII. act ii. sc. 2. Some strange commotion |