Ossian Collection > Life and letters of James Macpherson

44 yAMES MACPHERSON.
were written at this time appears by some
memoranda on one of the leaves relating to his
school and housekeeping ; and to one of the
passages the date of its composition is affixed.
There is not much to be said for these
poems. They are on the same level as the pro-
ductions of most young students with a literary
ambition ; they are no good ; in parts they
are even ludicrous. One of them, in blank verse,
is apparently an imitation of Robert Blair's
Grave, which was published in 1743. It is
entitled Death; and although it contains a few
fair similes, it is certainly a dreary performance.
The other is an unnamed effort in heroics, and
in ten cantos, to which one of Macpherson's
critics gave the name of The Hunter, to distin-
guish it from a later production, somewhat
resembling it. The Highlander. The following
passages show the kind of original work of
which Macpherson was capable at the age of
twenty ; and they are selected, not because of
any peculiar merit, for of that they have little,
but as showing their author's early liking for
descriptions of battle, and the character of his
feeling for nature. In The Hunter the influence
of Thomson's Seasons is sufficiently obvious ; but