Ossian Collection > Life and letters of James Macpherson

INFLUENCE IN ENGLAND-BYRON. 23
in a work which had dehghted him as a youth.
In 1793 Coleridge wrote two poems expressly
described as imitations of Ossian. Byron in his
Hours of Idleness shows unmistakable touches
of Ossianic sentiment, as in the verses on Oscar
of Alva, and sometimes a reminiscence of the
Ossianic language ; and he wrote a passage in
prose entitled The Death of Calmar and Orla,
in which he himself attempted the Ossianic
vein. To this he appended a note in which
he expressed his boyish opinion, that although
it might be proved that Macpherson's work
was not a translation of poems complete in
themselves, its merit remained undisputed, in
spite of its turgid diction ; and he offered his
humble imitation to the admirers of the original
as a proof of his attachment to their favourite
author. Wordsworth, it need hardly be said,
wrote of the poems with undisguised contempt.
He applied an over-subtle canon of natural de-
scription to their imagery, and denounced it as
spurious ; and thus he claimed to have discovered
an irrefragable proof that they were unworthy
of their wide reputation.^ Scott in his early
years had a fair share of the Ossianic fever ; but,
^ The Excursion : Essay supplementary to the Preface.