"Sons of Morven, spread the feast; send the night away in song. Ye have shone around me, and the dark storm is past. My people are the windy rocks, from which I spread my eagle actions as are ascribed to him in this book, at an age when his grandson, Oscar, had acquired so much reputation in arms? To this it may be answered, that Fingal. was but very young [Book iv.] when he took to wife Ros-crána, who soon after became the mother of Ossian. Ossian was also extremely young when he married Ever-allin, the mother of Oscar. Tradition relates, that Fingal was but eighteen years old at the birth of his son Ossian; and that Ossian was much about the same age when Oscar, his son was born. Oscar, perhaps, might be about twenty, when he was killed in the battle of Gabhra [Book i.]; so the age of Fingal, when the decisive battle was fought between him and Cathmor, was just fifty-six years. In those times of activity and health, the natural strength and vigour of a man was little abated at such an age; so that there is nothing improbable in the actions of Fingal, as related in this book. MACPHERSON. In this traditionary attempt to reconcile contradictions, the translator forgets, that in the former collection of Gaelic poems, Fingal opposed Caracalla in 208, and Oscar encountered Carausius in 286; an interval of almost eighty years, which renders the grandfather's age upwards of a hundred at the date of his last exploits in the Temora. Fingal, however, before he opposed Caracalla, or married Ros-crána, had already made different voyages to Inistore and Lochlin, and different incursions into the Roman province, in quest of wives or booty; and as the battle of Gabhra is placed by Irish historians in 296, his life must have been prolonged to a patriarchal old age. According to these historians, Fingal was killed in 284, at Ath wings, when I rush forth to renown, and seize it on its field. Ossian, thou hast the spear of Fingal it is not the staff of a boy, with which he strews the thistle round, young wanderer of the field. No: it is the lance of the mighty, with which they stretched forth their hands to death. Look to thy fathers, my son; they are awful beams. With morning lead Ferad-artho forth to the echoing halls of Temora. Remind him of the kings of Erin; the stately forms of old. brea, a ford in the river Boyn; though he is represented, by the Irish bards of the fifteenth century, as alive and present at the death of Oscar, on his return from Rome after the battle of Gabhra. Finnius filius Cumalli, Cormaci regis Hiberniæ gener, et militiæ præfectus, Nuado Niveo rege Hiberniæ oriundus, a tribus Urgrenni filiis de Luagniis Temorensibus, in dolo interfectus est apud Ath-brea, Boindi fluminis vadum, anno 283, juxta Dungall. Annales, æra vulgari uno anno superiores. Ogygia, 153. Hence, perhaps, the fictitious Cathmor's kingdom of Atha. The Annals of Dungall are of no more authority than the Annals of Ulster, which place the death of Ossian, the son of Oscar (jugulatio Oisein Mac Oseirg), in 650. But the translator should have adhered to the antediluvian longevity of the Fions in the Red Book of Clanronald; according to which, Ossian lived three hundred years, Gaul four hundred years, and Fingal himself fifty-two tens of years (five hundred and twenty years); and, "in those times of activity and health, the natural strength and vigour of a man were little abated at such an age." 1 Let not the fallen be forgot, they were mighty in the field. Let Carril pour his song, that the kings may rejoice in their mist. To-morrow I spread my sails to Selma's shaded walls; where streamy Duthula winds through the seats of roes." AFTER our observations upon Fingal, in the former volume, the epic art of the Temora requires little consideration. The greater part of the poem was written in London; but the author's knowledge of books was not much enlarged. His images are still derived from the same sources; from Homer, Virgil, and their two translators; from Milton, Thomson, Young, Gray, Mason, Home, and the English Bible; nor had he any new resources, or fund in reserve, from which his poetry might be enriched or diversified. He had never read the Italian poets, nor consulted the minor epics in Greek and Latin; and his occasional imitations of Catullus, Tibullus, and Apollonius Rhodius, were suggested either by translations or quotations. His machinery is the same as in Fingal, with the addition of the correlative spirits of heaven and of night. The characters are also the same; the fictitious Cathmor is the counterpart of Fingal; Cairbar, of Starno; Foldath, of Calmar, from Moloch, Milton's furious king; and young Fillan is a repetition of young Oscar; the twin brother of Alpin the Highlander. The turgid sentiments ascribed to these characters, are precisely those of the modern drama, introduced by Young, of which the tragic extravagance was mistaken for the sublime. As the imitations, perhaps, were less frequent, and as all ostentatious imitation of the classics was carefully avoided, the Temora was less pleasing and popular than Fingal. The composition of an epic poem within a twelvemonth is not surprising; as the chief labour was to disguise the similes previously collected from other poets, on inserting them into a fable of which the plot and narrative are utterly contemptible. It is easy to diversify, and even to improve occasionally, the ideas of others; bnt to compare any subsequent poets with Homer among the ancients, or with Shakspeare among the moderns, is to forget the immense distance between the most happy imitation, and the rare, or rather solitary, merit of original invention. To estimate the facility of such imitations, it is sufficient to consider, that the chief difficulty of Wilkie's forgotten Epigoniad consists in the rhyme, and that Glover might have furnished a short Leonidas annually in blank verse. With a genius for poetry far superior to either, or perhaps to any contemporary poet, Gray excepted, Macpherson was released even from the rules of versification; and if we may judge from the subjects which he had provided, the pretended translator might have produced, each year, an epic poem like an annual novel, had the Temora been equally successful with Fingal. |
