because the poems procured in the Highlands, were seen by many before Macpherson began to translate them. In that gentleman's excursion to the Highlands and Western Isles, we are told," he was accompanied by a person said to be one of the best Gaelic scholars of his time. He was, however, no otherwise useful to him than as a linguist, being destitute of taste, and even of ordinary poetical knowledge. This person cleared up to Macpherson many obscurities in the Celtic bard. In the collection, a great deal of extravagant and grotesque additions were expunged, all of which were easily known to be no part of Ossian, whose style, though bold and figurative, is all along distinguished by a dignity and pathos, a sublime and tender melancholy peculiar to himself. The manner in which the poems were handed down, could not but expose them to some changes and interpolations. Time will always introduce alterations. Few works of antiquity have reached us exactly as penned by their authors. L * Mrs. Grant, p. 363. thors. Even those sacred volumes, on which our happiness depends, notwithstanding the care with which they have been transcribed, have admitted variations, which have embarrassed the best commentators. Virgil's Æneis has, by Tucca and Varius, been retouched, Dryden thinks the four first lines affixed to the poem were added by them, and has therefore rejected them. The works of Homer are said to have received considerable additions, and to be differently arranged than they were left by that poet. Many are even of opinion he did not write his poems, but being a genuine minstrel like Ossian, the Scalds of Norway, the Welsh bards, the Spanish and Italian improvisatori, composed his rapsodies extempore, and sung them with energy and enthusiasm, to an admiring multitude. Each rapsody was in itself a complete song, connected with the whole, which formed at length the Iliad. It is natural enough to suppose that the bard would, in repeating them on different occasions, enlarge, substract, or change, as his fancy led him. In the mouths of others they must likewise have undergone various modifications, until committed to writing. Lycurgus was the first who brought the compositions of Homer from Ionia, but whether the whole of the Iliad and Odyssey in their present state, is uncertain; but Pisistratus was the person who arranged them, in the order they are now read. These, however, afterwards underwent several amendments. Zenodotus, in particular, is said to have taken great liberties with the text. And Aristophanes, his disciple, was likewise a corrector of Homer. But he seems to have laboured more in fixing what is called grammatical analogy, and the invention of points and accents, than in amending the text. Of all the emendators of the Grecian bard, Aristarcus is the most celebrated. He was looked upon as the prince of critics. Arguet ambique dictum, mutanda mutabit, Fiet Aristarcus. -Hor. Whatever he deemed spurious in Homer was rejected as such by subsequent editors. We are not, however, to imagine his corrections were always made on the authority of exemplars: it is more probable that he changed or expunged, whatever he deemed unworthy of Homer. Hence Cicero says, Aristarcus Homeri, versum negat, quem non probat. in This account of the Grecian bard has, every respect, so near a resemblance to Ossian, that I have here related it, to shew, that, whatever liberties Macpherson may have taken with his author, the same, if not greater, has been experienced by Homer. Mr. Laing observes, that the changes the Gaelic underwent in the course of so many centuries, is a conclusive argument against the possibility of Ossian's compositions being handed down by oral tradition. This certainly would have been an insurmountable objection, if time had rendered the language unintelligible. But this is not the case; the anonymous defender of Ossian tells us, in the parts where the where the poems were more more known, the diction had suffered so little by time, that they were perfectly understood. The constant repetition of the poems might have contributed much to this stability. Besides, it is very possible an author may contain obsolete expressions, and yet continue in favour, and be frequently in the mouths of every denomination of people. Shakespeare is a proof of this: no one's plays are in higher estimation, or oftener acted on the stage; nevertheless, in them are found words so obsolete and obscure, that some of the first geniuses of the age; have laboured in vain to ascertain their meaning. It will undoubtedly be objected, that Shakespeare wrote only in the sixteenth century, and Ossian in the third. Very true; but it should be considered that the English, by adopting new words from the dead and modern languages, has undergone as great a change during that short period, as the Gaelic has done from the time Ossian's poems were composed till now: for lying in a sequestered remote corner, the natives |