Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian > Volume 1

0\ THE POEMS OF OSSIAN'. CXXlll
the invocation of the ghosts of their fathers, to
receive tlie heroes falling in a distant land, are in-
troduced with great beauty of imagination to in-
crease tlie solemnity, and to diversify the scenery
of the i^oem.
Carricthura is full of the most sublime dignitj^ ;
and has this advantage, of being more cheerful in
the subject, and more happy in the catastrophe,
than most of the other poems : though tempered
at the same time with episodes in that strain of
tender melancholy which seems to have been the
^reat delight of Ossian and the bards of his age.
Lathmon is peculiarly distinguished by high ge-
nerosity of sentiment. This is carried so far, par-
ticularly in the refusal of Gaul, on one side, to
take the advantage of a slee})ing foe ; and of Lath-
mon, on the other, to overpower by numbers the
two young warriors, as to recal into one's mind
the manners of chivalry ; some resemblance to
which may perhaps be suggested by other inci-
dents in this collection of poems. Chivalry, hoAV-
ever, took rise in an age and country too remote
from those of Ossian, to admit the suspicion that
t!ie one could have borrowed any thing from the
other. So far as chivalry had any real existence,
the same military enthusiasm which gave birth to
it in the feudal times, might, in the days of Ossian,
that is, in the infancy of a rising state, through the
operation of the same cause, very naturally pro-
duce effects of the same kind on the minds and
manners of men. So far as chivalry Avas an ideal
system, existing only in rom.ance, it will not be
thought surprising, when we reflect on the ac-
rount before given of the Celtic Bards, that this
imaginary reiinement of heroic manners should be
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