Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

go CRITICAL DISSERTATION
ghosts were of the same nature, we cannot but ob-
serve, tliat Ossian's ghosts are drawn witii much
Stronger and livelier colours than those of Homer.
Ossian describes ghosts with all the particularity of
one who had seen and conversed with them, and
whose imagination was full of the impression they
had left upon it. He calls up those awful ajid tre-
mendous ideas which the
— — Simulacra modis pallentia miris
are fitted to raise in the human mind ; and which,
in Shakspeare's style, " harrow up the soul."
Crugal's ghost, in particular, in the beginning of
the second book of Fingal, may vie with any ap-
pearance of this kind, described by any epic or
tragic poet whatever. Most poets would have con-
tented themselves with telling us, that he resembled,
in every particular, the living Crugal; that his
form and dress were the same, only his face more
pale and sad; and that he bore the mark of the
wound by which he fell. But Ossian sets before
our eyes a spirit from the invisible world, distin-
guished by all those features, which a strong asto-
nished imagination would give to a ghost. " A
dark-red stream of fire comes down from the hill.
Crugal sat upon the beam ; he that lately fell by the
hand of Swaran, striving in the battle of heroes.
Ilis face is like the beam of the setting moon. His
robes are of the clouds of the hill. His eyes are like
two decaying flames. Dark is the wound of his
breast. — The stars dim-twinkled through his form;
and his voice was like the sound of a distant stream."
The circumstance of the stars being beheld, " dim-
twinkling through his form," is wonderfully pictu-
resque ; and conveys the most lively impression of
his thin and shadowy substance. The attitude in
which he is afterwards placed, and the speech put
into his mouth, are full of that solemn and awful
sublimity, which suits the subject. " Dim, and iu
tears, he stood, and stretched his pale hand over the
hero. Faintly he raised his feeble voice, like the
gale of the reedy Lego. — My ghost, O Connal ! is oa
my native hills ; but my corse is oa the sands of