SOURCE: "The Vogue of Ossian in America: A Study in Taste," in American Literature, Vol. 2, No. 4, January, 1931, pp. 405-17.

[In the essay below, Carpenter analyzes the reaction of Americans to the works of Ossian, asserting that a century after the poems first appeared, they influenced

Title page from Macpherson's first collection of poems, published in 1760, attributed to Ossian.

I

It has been said so often as almost to become a truism that American literary taste has followed slowly after European literary taste at an interval of from twenty to fifty years.¹ For instance, in the eighteenth century English literary circles developed a love for wit and elegance, and, after a due period of incubation, the Hartford Wits and Washington Irving translated this vogue to America. Then the great Romantic writers captured English taste by storm, and several decades later...