of virtue, and transmitted patterns of fortitude to posterity. This order of men do still exist among the Welsh and ancient Scots, (the Highlanders), and they still retain that name (of bards) in their native language.” *

It appears, indeed, from the researches of the most able antiquaries, that an order of Bards has existed in the Highlands of Scotland from a very remote era; that these bards, on the extinction of the Druids in Scotland about the third century, succeeded to many of their rights and privileges, and that they continued as a distinct class of men, and in uninterrupted succession, until A. D. 1726, when Nial Macvurich, the last of the bards, and whose an

* "Quamvis intelligunt omnes plus semper virium et industriæ Scotis fuisse ad res agendas, quam commentationis ad prædicandas, habuerunt tamen antiquitus, et coluerunt suos Homeros et Marones, quos Bardos nominabant. Hi fortium virorum facta versibus heroicis et lyræ modulis aptata concinebant; quibus et præsentium animos acuebant ad virtutis gloriam, et fortitudinis exempla ad posteros transmittebant. Cujusmodi apud Cambros et priscos Scotos nec dum desiêre ; et nomen illud patrio sermone adhuc retinent.

Vide Sinclair's Dissertation on the Authenticity of the Poems of Ossian, pp. 18, 19, and 20. where the translations given in the text are to be found.

cestors had, for several generations, exercised that office in the Clanranald family, died.

It is the express and uniform voice of tradition also, that this revolution, which devolved many of the functions of the Druids on the previously subordinate class of bards, was brought about through the agency of the race of Fingal *, a circumstance which sufficiently accounts for the silence of Ossian as to the Druidic rites.

That Fingal fought and Ossian sung can no longer, in short, from the weight of testimony which has been accumulated on their behalf, be disputed as facts; and that the latter was among the Celtic tribes, and to a very striking degree of similitude, what Homer is known to have been among the Grecian, is a further circumstance over which there now rests little doubt, and which gives to the poetry of the Scottish bard a peculiar degree of interest and effect.

The numerous coincidencies, indeed, which exist between them are truly remarkable. They appear to have addressed their poetry to a very similar state of society; to have been held in

* Vide Graham's Essay on the Authenticity of the Poems of Ossian, p. 395, and Dr. Smith's Seandana, p. 223 and 245.

nearly similar estimation and honour; to have not only formed their songs or rhapsodies into one great and dependent whole, but to have sung them in detached portions to the music of the harp at feasts and festivals; to have committed them in the same manner solely to memory, and to have left them to the care of oral tradition. Nor is the resemblance, with regard to the fate and fortunes of their poetical offspring, restricted to their lives; it is continued through all succeeding generations. We know that Lycurgus, during his travels in Ionia, collected the scattered poems of Homer, which were then sung or recited as detached ballads or episodes, and carried them into Greece*; where, for more than a century and a half, and until the time of Solon and Pisistratus, they continued to be known, admired, and chaunted, in their separate and unconnected form.

We also know, that of the poetry of Ossian, which had for many centuries been in the mouths of the Highlanders as insulated tales or songs, various collections were made long an

* Elian Hist. Var. lib. xiii, cap. 14,

terior to the time of Macpherson; that as Solon preceded Pisistratus, in attempting to restore the original catenation and series, so was Mr. Macpherson, in a similar manner and degree, anticipated by the efforts of Mr. Farquharson, whose manuscript in the Scotch college at Douay most certainly contained, and under an epic form, a great portion both of the fables of Fingal and Temora. *

As it was, however, to the labours of Pisistratus that Homer was chiefly indebted for a restoration to his original form and beauty †, as they existed in the Iliad and the Odyssey; so to the skill and taste of Mr. Macpherson, are we under similar obligations for a complete and highly interesting arrangement of the dislocated members of Fingal and Temora, as well in the language of the original, as through the medium of translation.

* Vide Sinclair's Dissertation, p. 42.

"Quis doctior isdem temporibus," says Cicero, "aut cujus eloquentia literis instructior fuisse traditur, quam Pisistrati? qui primus Homeri libris, confusos antea, sic disposuisse dicitur, ut nunc habemus." De Oratore, iii. 34.

The publication of the original Gaelic has put to flight the idea of Mr. Macpherson being its fabricator; for he has,

But singular and curious as this parallelism may appear, it admits of still further extension, when we recollect, that these great poets were also similarly circumstanced, as having been the first to give examples of epic poetry in their respective countries; as having equally carried it to a perfection unapproached in their different languages, and as having, in their old age, endured a like bodily infliction.

It is to this latter similitude, to the blindness of Ossian when advanced in life, that, as a companion to the picture which has been given of this calamity in the person of Homer, I shall now, exclusively, direct the attention of my readers.

In the works of Homer, with the exception of one remarkable passage in the Hymn to Apollo, we are left to infer the sentiments and feelings of the poet as to his own misfortune, from the description which he has given us of its effects and consequences in the person of the blind

in his translation, in numerous instances, grossly misunderstood its import. See Mr. Ross's version of the first book of Fingal, in Sir John Sinclair's Dissertation, and the seventh book of Temera, translated by Dr. Graham, in his Essay on Ossian.