Ossian Collection > Morison's edition of the Poems of Ossian, the son of Fingal

36 J A CRITICAL DISSERTATION ON
Jovely beam, foon haft thou fet on our hills ! the fteps of
thy departure were ftately, like the moon on the blue trem-
fcling wave. But thou haft left us in darknefs, firft of the
fnaids of Lutha f Soon haft thou let, Malvina ! but thou
rifeft, like the beam of the eaft, among the fpiritr, of thy
friends, where they fit in their ftormy halls, the chambers
of the thunder." This is correft and finely fupported.
But in the following inftance, the metaphor, though very
beautiful at the beginning, becomes imperfe<5t before it
clofes, by being improperly mixed with the literal fenfei
*' Trathal went forth with the ftream of his people ; but
they met a rock ; Fingal ftood unmoved ; broken they rolled
back from his fide. Nor did they roll in fafety ; the fpcar
6f the king purfued their flight."
The hyperbole is a figure which we might expedt to find
often employed by Oflian ; as the undifciplined imaginatioil
of early ages generally prompts exaggeration, and carries its
obje(fts to exfcefs ; whereas longer expefience, and farther
progrefs in the arts of life, chaften men's ideas and expref-
fibns. Yet Ofiian's hyperbolefS appear not to me, either fo
frequent or fo harfh as might at firft have been looked for ;
an advantage owing no doubt to the more cultivated ftate,
in which, as was before ihewn, poetry fubfifted among the
ancient Celtae, than among moft other barbarous nations.
One of the raoft exaggerated defcriptions in the whole work,
is what meets us at the beginning of Fingal, where the fcout
makes his report to Cuchuliin of the landing of the foe.
But this is fo far from defending cenfure that it merits praife,
as being, on that oceaiion, natural and proper. The fcout
arrives, trembling and full of fears ; and it is well known,
that no paffion difpofes men to hyperbolife more than terror.
It both annihilates themfelves in their own apprehenfron,
and magnifies every objeft which they view^ through the
jnediuns