Ossianic Controversy: A Lecture Delivered to the Greenock Highland Society

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A. Mackenzie & Company, 1873 - 15 pages
 

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Page 6 - ... have undertaken the task which I used the freedom to recommend to you. Nothing less than what you propose will serve the purpose. You need expect no assistance from Macpherson, who flew into a passion when I told him of the letter I had wrote to you. But you must not mind so strange and hétéroclite a mortal, than whom I have scarce ever known a man more perverse and nnamiable.
Page 9 - ... the preservation of such long and such connected poems, by oral tradition alone, during a course of fourteen centuries, is so much out of the ordinary course of human affairs, that it requires the strongest reasons to make us believe it.
Page 7 - Highlanders displayed a civilisation inconsistent with an utter ignorance of the arts of life ; an uniform heroism unknown to barbarians ; a gallantry which chivalry never inspired ; a humanity which refinement has never equalled, and that before their advance to the shepherd state they possessed a correct taste, a polished diction, a cultivated and sublime poetry enriched with the choicest images of classical antiquity and intermixed with all the sentimental affectation of the present times.
Page 4 - ... the other pieces which he had, and bring them to him, promising that he, Dr. Blair, would take care to circulate and bring them out to the public, to whom they well deserved to be made known. Dr. Blair informs us that Macpherson was extremely reluctant and averse to comply with his request, saying, that no translation of his could do justice to the spirit and force of the original ; and that besides injuring them by translation, he apprehended that they would be very ill relished by the public...
Page 4 - Edinburgh in 1760 under the title Fragments of Ancient Poetry, Collected in the Highlands of Scotland and translated from the Gaelic or Erse Language.
Page 7 - These provincial synods do not appear as a constant and regular institution, fixed to definite times, until the end of the second, or the beginning of the third century ; and it...
Page 11 - ... great plausibility, is the absence of all allusions to religion. ' Religion," says Mr. Laing, ' was avoided as a dangerous topic that might lead to detection. The gods and rites of the Caledonians were unknown. From the danger, however, or the difficulty of inventing a religious mythology, the author has created a savage society of refined atheists; who believe in ghosts, but not in deities, and are either ignorant of, or indifferent to, the existence of superior powers. In adopting Rousseau's...
Page 10 - s in manuscript, such as translated by Macpherson, of a decent length, and the MS. indisputably of an older date than the present century, be produced and lodged in a public library, I shall return among the first to our national creed.
Page 11 - by the most respectable writers of antiquity, that the Celtic hierarchy was divided into several classes, to each of which its own particular department was assigned. The Druids, by the consent of all, constitute the highest class ; the Bards seem to have been the next in rank ; and the Eubages the lowest.
Page 11 - God but the ghosts of their fathers" It is certainly not easy to account for the absence of any allusion to religion in the poems.

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