Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

A
DISSERTATION
CONCERNING
THE ^RA OF OSSIAN.
TNQUiries into the antiquities of nations afford
•^ more pleasure than any real advantage to man-
kind. The ingenious may form systems of history
on probabilities and a few facts ; but, at a great
distance of time, their accounts must be vague
and uncertain. The infancy of states and king-
doms is as destitute of great events, as of the means
of transmitting them to posterity. The arts of
polished life, by which alone facts can be preserved
with certainty, are the production of a well-formed
community. It is then historians begin to write,
and public transactions to be worthy remembrance.
The actions of former times are left in obscurity,
or magnified by uncertain traditions. Hence it is
that we find so much of the marvellous in the
origin of every nation ; posterity being always
ready to believe any thing, however fabulous, that
reflects honour on their ancestors.
The Greeks and Romans were remarkable for
this weakness. They swallowed the most absurd
fables concerning the high antiquities of their re-
spective nations. Good historians, however, rose
very early amongst them, and transmitted, with
lustre, their great actions to posterity. It is to
them that they owe that unrivalled fame they now
enjoy, while the great actions of other nations are
involved in fables, or lost in obscurity. The Celtic