[16] Shenstone, in his ‘Schoolmistress,’ gives a still more remarkable instance of this timidity.  On its first appearance, (See D’Israeli’s 2d Series of the Curiosities of Literature) the Poem was accompanied with an absurd prose commentary, showing, as indeed some incongruous expressions in the text imply that the whole was intended for burlesque.  In subsequent editions, the commentary was dropped, and the People have since continued to read in seriousness, doing for the Author what he had not courage openly to venture upon for himself.

But from humble ballads we must ascend to heroics.

All hail, Macpherson! hail to thee, Sire of Ossian!  The Phantom was begotten by the smug embrace of an impudent Highlander upon a cloud of tradition—­it travelled southward, where it was greeted with acclamation, and the thin Consistence took its course through Europe, upon the breath of popular applause.  The Editor of the Reliques had indirectly preferred a claim to the praise of invention, by not concealing that his supplementary labours were considerable! how selfish his conduct, contrasted with that of the disinterested Gael, who, like Lear, gives his kingdom away, and is content to become a pensioner upon his own issue for a beggarly pittance!—­Open this far-famed Book!—­I have done so at random, and the beginning of the ‘Epic Poem Temora,’ in eight Books, presents itself.  ’The blue waves of Ullin roll in light.  The green hills are covered with day.  Trees shake their dusky heads in the breeze.  Grey torrents pour their noisy streams.  Two green hills with aged oaks surround a narrow plain.  The blue course of a stream is there.  On its banks stood Cairbar of Atha.  His spear supports the king; the red eyes of his fear are sad.  Cormac rises on his soul with all his ghastly wounds.’  Precious memorandums from the pocket-book of the blind Ossian!

If it be unbecoming, as I acknowledge that for the most part it is, to speak disrespectfully of Works that have enjoyed for a length of time a widely-spread reputation, without at the same time producing irrefragable proofs of their unworthiness, let me be forgiven upon this occasion.—­Having had the good fortune to be born and reared in a mountainous country, from my very childhood I have felt the falsehood that pervades the volumes imposed upon the world under the name of Ossian.  From what I saw with my own eyes, I knew that the imagery was spurious.  In Nature everything is distinct, yet nothing defined into absolute independent singleness.  In Macpherson’s work, it is exactly the reverse; every thing (that is not stolen) is in this manner defined, insulated, dislocated, deadened,—­yet nothing distinct.  It will always be so when words are substituted for things.  To say that the characters never could exist, that the manners are impossible, and that a dream has more substance than the whole state of society, as there depicted, is doing nothing more than pronouncing a