Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian, the son of Fingal

j66 A CRITICAL DISSERTATION Ol^
poetry. For many circumftances of thofe times whick
we call barbarous, are favourable to the poetical fpirit.
That Hate, in which human nature fhoots wild and free,
though unfit for other improvements, certainly encour-
ages the high exertions of fancy and paffion.
In the infancy of focieties, men live fcattered and dif-
perfed, in the midft of folitary rural fcenes, where the
beauties of nature are their .chief entertainment. They
meet with many objects, to them new and ilrange ; their
wonder and furprife are frequently excited ; and by the
fudden changes of fortune occuring in their unfettled Hate
of life, their pafiions are raifed to the utmoft. Their paf-
fions "have nothing to reftrain them : their imagination has
nothing to check it. They difplay themfelves to one ano-
ther without difguife : and converfe and a6t in the unco-
vered limplicity of nature. As their feelings are ftrong,
fo their language, of itfelf, affumes a poetical turn. Prone
to exaggerate, they defcribe every thing in the flrongeft
colours; which of courfe renders their fpeech pidlurefque
and figurative. Figurative language owes its rife chiefly
to two caufes ; to the v/ant of propern ames for objeds,
and to the influence of imagination and paflion over the
fonn of expreflion. Both thefe caufes concur in the in-
flincy of fociety. Figures are commonly confidered as
artificial modes of fpeech, devifed by orators and poets,
after the world had advanced to a refined fl:ate. The
contrary of this is the truth. Men never have ufed fo
many figures of ftyle, as in thofe rude ages, when, be-
fides the power of a warm imagination to fuggeft: lively
images, the want of proper and precife terms for the ideas
they would exprefs, obliged them to have recourfe to cir-
cumlocution, metaphor, comparifon, and all thofe fubfli-
tuted forms of expreflion, which give a poetical air to lan-
guage. An American chief, at this day, harangues at
the head of his tribe, in a more bold metaphorical flyle,
than a modern European would adventure to ufe in an
epic poem.
In the progrefs of fociety, the genius and manners of
men undergo a change more favourable to accuracy than
to fprigdinefs and fubhmily. As the world advances,
the underflanding gains ground upon the imagination ;
(he updcrllanding is more cxercifed; the imagination lefs,
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