Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian > Volume 1

118 A CRITICAL DISSERTATION ON
this taciturnity may be also remarked in Ossian.
On all occasions he is frugal of his words; and
never gives you more of an image or a de-
scription than is just sufficient to place it before
you in one clear point of view. It is a blaze of
lightning, which flashes and vanishes. Homer
is more extended in his descriptions ; and fills
them up with a greater variety of circumstances.
Roth the poets are dramatic ; that is, they in-
troduce their personages frequently speaking
before us. But Ossian is concise and rapid in
his speeches, as he is in every other thing.
Homer, with the Greek vivacity, had also some
portion of the Greek loquacity. His speeches
indeed are highly characteristical ; and to them
we are much indebted for that admirable display
he has given of human nature. Yet if he be
tedious any where, it is in these ; some of them
are trilling; and some of them plainly unsea-
sonable. Both poets are eminently sublime ; but
a difference may be remarked in the species of
their sublimity. Homers sublimity is accom-
panied with more impetuosity and fire ; Ossian's
with more of a solemn and awful grandeur.
Homer hurries you along ; Ossian elevates, and
fixes you in astonishment. Homer is most sub-
lime in actions and battles; Ossian, in description
and sentiment. In the pathetic. Homer, when
he chuscs to exert it, has great power; but