Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian > Volume 1

THE POEMS OF OSSIAN. . lU
hill of Cromla, the storm of the sea of jVIalmor,
or the reeds of the lake of Lego. A mode of
expression, which, whilst it is characteristical of
ancient ages, is at the same time highly favour-
able to descriptive poetry. For the same rea-
sons, personification is a poetical figure not very
common with Ossian. Inanimate objects, such
as winds, trees, flowers, he sometimes personifies
with great beauty. But the personifications
which are so familiar to later poets of Fame,
Time, Terror, Virtue, and the rest of that class,
were unknown to our Celtic bard. These were
modes of conception too abstract for his age.
All these are marks so undoubted, and some
of them too so nice and delicate, of the most
early times, as put the high antiquity of these
poems out of question. Especially when we
consider, that if there had been any imposture
in this case, it must have been contrived and
executed in the Highlands of Scotland, two or
three centuries ago; as up to this period, both
by manuscripts, and by the testimony of a
multitude of living witnesses, concerning the
uncontrovertible tradition of these poems, they
can clearly be traced. Now this is a period
when that country enjoyed no advantages for
a composition of this kind, which it may not be
supposed to have enjoyed in as great, if not in
a greater degree, a thousand years before. To