Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian > Volume 1

Ixxvlii A CRITICAL DISSERTATION
a man, who, endowed with a natural happy ge«
nius, favourqd by peculiar advantages of birth an4 "
condition, and meeting, in the course of his life,
with a variety of incidents proper to fire his ima-
gination, and to touch his heart, slionld attain a
degree of eminence in poetry, worthy to draw the
admiration of more refnif^'d ages ?
The compositions of Ossian are so strongly
marlied with characters of antiquity, that although
there were no external proof to support that an-
tiquity, hardly any reader of judgment and taste
pauld hesitate in referring them to a very remote
aera. There are four great stages through which
men successively pass in the progress of.society.
The first and earliest is the* life of hunters; pas.
turage succeeds to this, as tlie ideas of property
begin to take root; next agriculture; and lastly,
commerce. Throughout Ossian's poems, we
plainly find ourselves in the first of these periods
of society; during which, hunting was the chief
employment of men, ai;jd the principal method of
their procuring subsistence. Pasturage was not
indeed wholly unknown; for we hear of dividing
the herd in the case of a divorce; but the allusions
to herds and to catde are not many ; and of agri-
culture we find no traces. No cities appear to
have been built in the territories of Fingal. 'No
arts are mentioned except that of navigation and
of Avorking in iron*. Every thing presents to us
* Their skill in navigation need not at all surprise us.
Living in the western irLind.s along the coast, or in a coun-
try which is everywhere intepsccted with arms of the sea,
one of the first objects of their attention, from the earliest
time, must have been how to traver e the water^-. Hence
that kaowledge of the stars, so necessary for guiding theji