Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

CRITICAL DISdERTATION
THE POEMS OF OSSIAN
THE SON or VINSAL.
BY HUGH BLAIR, D. D.
One of the Ministers of the High Church, and Professor
of Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres, Edinburglu
Amono the monuments remaining of the an-
cient state of nations, few are more valuable
than their poems or songs. History, when it
treats of remote or dark ages, is seldom very
instructive. The beginnings of society, in
every country, are involved in fabulous confu-
sion : and though they were not, they would
furnish few events worth recording. But, in
every period of society, human manners are a
curious spectacle ; and the most natural p'c-
tures of ancient manners are exhibited in the
ancient poems of nations. These present to
us, what is much more valuable than the his-
lory of such transactions as a rude age can af-
ford — the history of human imagination and
passion. They make us acquainted with the
notions and feelings of our fellow creatures in
the most artless ages ; discovering what ob-
jects they admired, and what pleasures they
pursued, before those refinements of sot;iety