Ossian Collection > Poems of Ossian

94 CRITICAL DISSERTATION
manners of chivalry ; some resemblance to which
may perhaps be suggested by other incidents in
this collection of Poems. Chivalry, however, took
rise in an age and country too remote from those of
03sian, to admit the s\ispicion that the one could
have borrowed any thing from the other. So far
as chivalry had any real existence, the same mili-
tary enthusiasm which gave birth to it in the feu-
dal times, might, in the days of Ossian, that is, in
tlie infancy of a rising state, through the operation
af the same cause, very naturally produce effects
of the same kind on the minds and manners of men.
So far as chivalry was an ideal system, existing on-
ly in romance, it will not be thought surprising,
■when we reflect on the account before given of the
Celtic bards, that tliis imaginary refinement of he-
roic manners should be found among them, as much,
at least, as among the Troubadours, or strolling
Provencal Bards, in the 10th or 11th century;
whose songs, it is said, first gave rise to those ro-
mantic ideas of heroism which for so long a time
enchanted Europe. Ossian's heroes have all the
gallantry and generosity of those fabulous knights,
without their extravagance ; and his love-scenes
have native tenderness, without any mixture of
those forced and unnatural conceits which abound
iu the old romances. The adventures related by
our poet which resemble the most those of romance,
concern women who follow their lovers to war dis-
guised iu the armour of men ; and these are so ma-
naged as to produce, in the discovery, several of
the most interesting situations ; one beautiful in-
stance of which may be seen in Carric-thura, an-
other in Calthon and Colmal.
Oithona presents a situation of a different nature.
In the absence of her lover, Gaul, she had been car-
ried off and ravished by Dunroinmath. Gaul dis-
covers the place where she is kept concealed, and
comes to revenge her. The meeting of the two
lovers, the sentiments and the behaviour of Oithona
on that occasion, are described with such tender
and exquisite propriety, as does the greatest lionour
both to the heart and to the delicacy of our Author;