Ossian Collection > Life and letters of James Macpherson

22 JAMES MACPHERSON.
too, expressed some of the general enthusiasm.
M^hul wrote his ojoera of Uthal in the Ossianic
vein ; and to heighten the weird and melancholy
effect of the music, he employed tenors for all
the treble parts, to the exclusion of violins.^
Nor is the popularity of the poems on the Con-
tinent yet exhausted ; for in recent years they
have been translated anew both into French and
into German.
Although with us Macpherson's work was
the delight of the young for two or even three
generations, and here and there finds, perhaps,
a solitary reader still, it is no longer widely
known, or known only to be despised. But
towards the end of the eighteenth century Os-
sian was the most popular of poets. From his
alleged antiquity he ranked as a classic with the
mass of readers ; and his fame, such as it was,
seemed as though it might last. While it is true
that the taste of the day was largely formed by
admiration for the poems, their direct influence
on great English writers was slight and transient.
Blake composed a few fragments in measured
prose, pervaded by their tone and style ; and to
the end of his life he professed to find pleasure
^ See Grove's Did. of Music, s. v. " Tenor Violins ".