deeds of other times; we behold no more. of kings renowned in our land, of chiefs Thus let night pass, until morning shall appear in our halls. Then let the bow be at hand, the dogs, the youths of the chace. We s all ascend the hill with day; and awake the deer. clauses, of the same structure, and nearly of the same length; the second clause containing generally a repetition, a contrast, or an amplification of the sentiment expressed in the first: and the result of these responses, or parallelisms, is a sententious harmony, or measured prose, which even our English translation of the Bible has preserved. O sing unto the Lord a new song; Sing unto the Lord all the earth. Sing unto the Lord, bless his name; Shew forth his salvation from day to day. His wonders among all people; For the Lord is great, and greatly to be praised: He is to be feared above all gods. Honour and majesty are before him; Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary. Psalm, xcvii. In these verses, the second is uniformly an amplification of the first; but in others the alternation of the clause is preserved without repetition. For, lo, the winter is past, The rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; The time of the singing of birds is come, And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, And the vines, with the tender grapes, give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. It is evident, that the Six Bards has been written in the same form of corresponding clauses, of which Macpherson probably acquired the first information from Blair's lectures. No star with green trembling beam; No moon looks from the sky; I hear the blast in the wood; But I hear it distant far, The stream of the valley murmurs; But its murmur is sullen and sad. From the tree at the grave of the dead, No beast, no bird is abroad, But the owl and the howling fox: He in a cloud on the hill. When the principles of measured prose were discovered, a species of composition, to which the author's ear had been early habituated by his Scriptural studies, was recommended by its facility, as a cheap and commodious disguise to conceal his imitations, and to relieve him from the constraint, not only of rhyme, to which he was never equal, but even of verse itself. Every sentence in Ossian is written in parallelisms, or corresponding clauses, by which the peculiar cadence, and the sententious brevity of the style are produced. Cuthullin sat by Tura's wall: By the tree of the rustling sound. His spear leaned against a (mossy) rock. Mourn ye sons of song, Mourn the death of the noble Sithallin, Let the sighs of Fiomia rise On the lone plains of her lovely Ardan, Like the shrill spirit of a storm. He sits dim on the clouds of the north, And enjoys the death of the mariner. When the people are blasted and fall, And all the hills are burning around. " The translation of Homer's Iliad, upon which Macpherson had probably exercised his pen before he attempted Ossian, is executed on the same principle of corresponding clauses. He informs us himself, that he had measured the whole in his own ear; and, to bring the eye of the reader to the assistance of his ear, where the pointing does not occasion a stop, the fall of the cadence (or corresponding clause) is frequently marked with a short line." Pref. 18 Thus: The wrath of the son of Peleus,-O goddess of song, unfold! The deadly wrath of Achilles. To Greece the source of many woes! Which peopled the regions of death,-with shades of heroes untimely slain : While pale they lay along the shore: Torn by beasts and birds of prey: But such was the will of Jove! Begin the verse, from the source of rage, —between Achilles and the sovereign of men." MACPHERSON'S Homer, i. 1. Thus, as in the later editions of Ossian, each clause begins with a capital letter, to mark the alternation; or, if the sense is necessarily protracted, the cadence, or return of the corresponding elause, is distinguished by a dash : and the whole was evidently composed, and intended when written, to be read in recitative; as if printed thus: The wrath of the son of Peleus, O goddess of song, unfold. The deadly wrath of Achilles : And many flamed their fires on the field! Id. When Macpherson informs us, iu a Dissertation prefixed to Fingal (1st edit.), that "the translation is extremely literal; that the arrangement of words in the original is imitated, and the very inversions of style observed;" we are at no loss to discover, that the Earse version, the pretended orginal, is written upon the same principle of parallelisms, or measured prose. In the same Dissertation, indeed, he assures us, that " The compositions of the bards were so admirably contrived to be handed down by tradition; each verse was so connected with those which preceded or followed it; that if one line had been remembered in a stanza, it was almost impossible to forget the rest; that the cadences followed in so natural a gradation, and the words were so adapted to the natural turn of the voice, after it is raised to a certain key, that it was almost impossible, from a similarity of sound, to substitute one word for another; an excellence peculiar to the Celtic tongue, and perhaps to be met with in no other language." This marvellous stanza, peculiar to the Celtic, exempt from every corruption incident to writing, and so well adapted to the purposes of tradition, can relate only to the alliteration common to Irish, Saxon, and Scandinavian poetry, by which alone the words of one verse can suggest those of another, by the similarity, or alliterative correspondence of sound. The Irish ballads ascribed to Ossian, are strictly alliterative; and the complicated rules of alliteration in Irish poetry, are so similar to those of the northern Scalds, that they were probably introduced on the conquest of Ireland by the Norwegians or Danes. The Battle of Garriock (anno 1411), the oldest Earse poem perhaps extant, is also alliterative; but the more recent poetry of the Highlands is in the common lyric measure of Scotch and English songs. It is observable, however, that the Earse version of Macpherson's Ossian is written neither in alliteration nor in rhyme; nor in stanzas, nor in any certain measure or return of feet; nor in lines of any determinate length; nor, in short, in numbers; but in measured prose, in which the cadence and length of the line are varied so as to suit the sense." Supra, p. 382. Upon this subject, it is sufficient to appeal to the translator's own explanation of the tact: "That the lyric pieces, scattered through the poems of Ossian, are certainly very beautiful in the original; yet they must appear much to disadvantage, stripped of numbers and the harmony of rhyme. In the recitative, or narrative part of the poem, the original is rather a measured sort of prose than any regular versificatio; but it has all that variety of cadences which suit the different ideas and passions of the speakers." Supra, p. 77, note. According to this explanation, the addresses prefixed, or subjoined to the lesser poems, and interspersed through the larger, were written with greater care, in regular numbers, if not in rhyme; and the rest of the poems in a kind of recitative or measured prose; as if measured prose could have been preserved by tradition. The English version must have necessarily acquired some additional ease from the prosaic form in which it was written; but the Earse original consists of the same parallelisms, clause for clause, without any greater approximation towards verse, than such occasional contraction, or expansion of thought, as the mode of printing required. O linna doir-choille na Leigo, Air uair eri' ceo taobh-ghorm nan ton; Nuair dhunas dorsa na h'oicha Air iulluir shuil greina nan speur : From the wood-skirted waters of Lego Wide over Lara's stream, Is poured the vapour dark and deep: The moon, like a dim shield, Is swimming through its folds. In some of these lines the harmony is superior, in others, again, it is inferior, in English, as the expression is abridged; but, in general, the measure, or recitative of the two versions (From the wood-skirted waters of Lego; O linna doir choille na Leigo), is almost identical; without any greater difference than such additional ease, or constraint, as is introduced into the different copies, or forms, of the Six Bards. The execution of the two versions by the same person, upon the same principle of parallelisms, and nearly, perhaps, at the same period, can alone account for the exact coincidence of cach line in Earse, both in sense and cadence, with the corresponding clause of each sentence in the English original. It was dark! The sleeping hosts were still; In the (red) skirts of night. 'S dolloir so! Ata na sloigh na nsuain, san am An truscan cear na h'oicha. Lumon of the streams! Thou risest on Fonar's soul: (my soul) The sun is on thy side, On the rocks of thy bending trees. Lumon na sruth! 'Ta u dealra, air m'anam fein: 'Ta do ghrian, air do thaobh Lumon of foamy streams! Ta u dealra air m'anam fein. Ullin, Carril, and Ryno! Voices of the times of old, Let me hear you while yet it is dark, To please and awake my soul, |