J. F. Campbell Collection > Original collection of the poems of Ossian, Orrann, Ulin, and other bards, who flourished in the same age

PREFACE. XXV
fined and polished ages. Ossian, like Homer,
lived in an early period. As music and songs of
bards, were the favourite amusement of his coun-
trymen, as well as of all the Celtio nations, the
language has been sufficiently polished for poe-
tical compositions; yet not so much so, as to
render it quite effeminate, like most of our
modern tongues, which are so full of abstract
terms, that no poet of our days rises to that unaf-
fected strength of expression, so remarkable in
the compositions of primitive times. Of these, the
old scriptures, Homer, and Ossian, will remain
the patterns of style and sublimity to every suc-
ceeding generation.
•' In an unwritten speech, nothing that is not
very short, is transmitted from one generation to
another. Few have opportunities of hearing a
long composition often enough to learn it, or have
inclination to repeat it so often as is necessary to
retain it, and what is once forgotten is lost for ever.
I believe there cannot be recovered, in the whole
Erse language, five hundred lines of which there
is an evidence to prove them an hundred years
old. Yet I hear the father of Ossian boasts of two
chests of ancient poetry, which he suppressed,
because they are too good for the English. He
that goes into the Highlands, with a mind naturally
acquiescent, and a credulity eager for wonders,
may come back with an opinion very different
from me; for the inhabitants, knowing the igno-