J. F. Campbell Collection > Poems of Ossian > Volume 3

ABBE' CESAROTTl's Dl SSERTATI ON. 297
centuries ago ; as up to that period, botli by manu-
scripts, and by tlie testimony of a nuiltitude of living
witnesses, concerning the uncontrovertible tradition
of these poems, they can ciearly be traced. To sup-
pose that two or three luindred years ago, wlien we
weil Ivnow the Higlilands to liave been in a state of
gross ignorance and barliarity, there sliould have
arisen in that country a poet, of sucli exquisite
genius, and of sucli deep knowiedge of mankindand
of history, as to divest himself of tlie ideas and man-
ners of his ovvn age, and to give us a just and natural
picture of a state of society ancieììter by a tliousand
years ; one, who could support this counterfeited
antiquity through such a large collection of poems,
without the least inconsistency ; and who, possessed
of all this genius and art, had, at the same time, the
self-denial of concealing hiniself, and of ascribing his
own works to an antiquated bard, without the im-
posture being detected ; is a supposition that tran-
scends all credibility.
" Another circumstance of the greatest weight
against this hypothesis is, the total absence of reli-
gious ideas from this work ; for which the translator
has, in his preface, given a very probable account,
on the footing of its being the work of Ossian. The
druidical superstition was, in the days of Ossian, on
the point of its fìnal extinction ; and the Christian
faith Avas not yet established in those climates. But
had it been the work of one, to whom the ideas of
Christianity were familiar from his infancy ; and who
had superadded to them also the bigotted superstition
of a dark age and country ; it is impossible, but in