SOURCE: "General Survey and First Notices: General Considerations upon the Reception of the Ossianic Poems in Germany," in Ossian in Germany, 1901. Reprint by AMS Press, 1966, pp. 66-75.

In the following excerpt from his landmark study of Macpherson's influence on German Romantic poetry, Tombo surveys the history of the poet's popularity in that country.

Almost a century and a half has elapsed since the literary world of Europe bowed to a new offspring of the poetic muse that many thought would be immortal. The poems of Ossian were assigned to a 'natural genius,' whom men of unquestioned literary sagacity placed next to and even above Homer. Now they are almost forgotten, and their interest lies mainly in the influence they exerted upon some of the greatest minds of the 18th century.

It was in the year 1760 that James Macpherson, a Scotch youth of twenty-four, published in Edinburgh some...