Ossian Collection > Fingal of Ossian

34
PREFACE.
"' widi to enforce them by efficacious Exprefiions ; Speech be-
" comes embodied and permanent ; different Modes and Phrafes
" are compared, and the beft obtains an Eftablifhment. By
" Degrees one Age improves upon another, Exadlnel's is firft
" obtained, and afterwards Elegance. But Didion, merely
" vocal, is always in its Childhood. As no Man leaves his
" Eloquence behind him, the new Generations have all to
*' learn. There may poffibly be Books without a polifhed
" Language, but there can be no poliflied Language without
" Books."
In advanced Society, no Doubt, a Language improves, ac-
quires a greater Number of Phrafes and Turns of Expreffion by
the Multiplicity of Works compofed in it ; but too much Re-
finement only enervates a Language, and makes it unfit for po-
etical Compofitions. In the barren State of an uncultivated
Tongue, the Want of peculiar Words to convey certain
Thoughts, forces Men to employ thofe high-flown Metaphors
and Figures, which animate and diflinguifli Poetry from the
common Modes of Speech ; and it is this makes the Writings
of Antiquity fo poetical *.
No
* Men have never ufed fo many Figures of Style, as in thofe rude Ages, when, bcfides
the Power of warm Imagination to fuggeft lively Images, the Want of proper and precife
Terms for the Ideas they would cxprefs, obliges them to have Recourfe to Circumlocu-
tion, Metaphor, Comparifon, and all thofe fubftituted Forms of Expreflion, which jjive
a poetical Air to Language. An American Chief, at this Day, harangues at the Head of
his Tribe, in a more bold metaphorical Style, than a modern E-.iropean would venture to
«fe in an heroic Poem. In the Progrefs of Society, the Genius and Manners of Men
undergo