Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

THE POEMS OF OSSIAN. 35
admired Virgil understood his beauties, he would
have scarce deserved to have come down to us,
through so many centuries. Unless genius were in
fashion. Homer himself might have written in vain.
He that wishes to come with weight on the super-
ficial, must skim the surface, in their own 3haUo^T
waj'. Were my aim to gain the many, I would
write a madrigal sooner than an heroic poem. La-
berius himself would be always sure of more fol-
lowers than Sophocles.
Some who doubt the authenticity of this work,
with peculiar acuteness appropriate them to the
Irish nation. Though it is not easy to conceive how
these Poems can belong to Ireland and to me at
once, I shall examine the subject, without further
animadversion on the blunder.
Of all the nations descended from the ancient
Celtas, the Scots and Irish are the most similar in
language, customs, and manners. This argues a
more intimate connexion between them, than a re-
mote descent from the greatCeltic stock. It is evi-
dent, in short, that, at some period or other, they
formed one society, were subject to the same govern-
ment, ajid were, in all respects, one and the same
people. How they became divided, which the co-
lony, or which the mother-nation, I have in another
work amply discussed. The first circumstance that
induced me to disregard the vulgarly-received opi-
nion of the Hibernian extraction of the Scottish
nation, was my observations en their ancient lan-
guage. That dialect of the Celtic tongue, spoken in
the north of Scotland, is much more pure, more
agreeable to its mother-language, and more abound-
ing with primitives, than that now spoken, or even
that which has been written for some centuries back,
amongst the most unmixed part of the Irish nation.
A Scotchman, tolerably conversant in his own lan-
guage, understands an Irish comfiosition, from that
derivative analogy which it has to the Galic of
North Britain. An Irishman, on the other hand,
without the aid of study, can never understand a
composition in the Galic tongue. This affords a
proof, that the Scotch Galic is the most original,