The Poems of Ossian, and C. Containing the Poetical Works of J. MacPherson, with Notes and Illustr. by M. Laing

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1805 edition. Excerpt: ... THE SIX BARDS, A FRAGMENT. Ihe following descriptive poem, (though very old) is of much later date than the foregoing Fragments 1. Five bards, who are the guests of a chief, (himself an excellent poet) go severally out to make their observations on the night, and return each with an extemporary description of it, to which the chief adds one of his own. The time is supposed to be in October, the harvest month in the Highlands; when the face of nature is as various, and its changes as sudden, as they are here represented. Select Letters between Shcnstone and others; published by Hull, 1778. vol. ii. p. 172. 1 The Sir Bards was transmitted, with other Fragments, to Gray and Shenstone, as if literally translated, verse for verse, from an Earse original. It was afterwards published in the same form with the rest of (.'...i;in; and the two copies are now reprinted upon opposite pages, that the variations of imagery observed by Mason may be better contrasted, and the principles of measured prose more distinctly ascertained. The translator has produced it as " A poem a thousand years later than Ossian; but the million seem to have observed his manner, and to have adopted some f his expressions: " or in other words, the poem is descriptive of a later period of society, but the author is the same. Gray considered it as "inferior in kind to the other Fragments, because it vas merely descriptive, but yet full of nature and noble wild imagination." In my opinion it ii far superior, as it is purely descriptive, (in which Macpiicrson certainly excelled) without any insipid fable, and with less of that false pathos and affected sublimity which render Ossian such strange bombast. But'Macpherson's Night-piece, an imitation of Parnel's Night-piece 011...