Fragments Of Ancient Poetry | Page 5

attended by "many of the first persons of rank and taste in Edinburgh," including Robertson, Home, and Fergusson.[17] Robert Chalmers acted as treasurer; among the forty odd subscribers who contributed 60��, were James Boswell and David Hume.[18] By the time of the second edition of the Fragments (also in 1760), Blair, or more likely Macpherson himself, could inform the public in the "Advertisement" "that measures are now taken for making a full collection of the remaining Scottish bards; in particular, for recovering and translating the heroic poem mentioned in the preface."
Macpherson, a frugal man, included many of the "Fragments"?in his later work. Sometimes he introduced them into the notes as being later than Ossian but in the same spirit; at other times he introduced them as episodes in the longer narratives. With the exception of Laing's edition, they are not set off, however, and anyone who wishes to see what caused the initial Ossianic fervor?must consult the original volume.
When we have to remind ourselves that a work of art was revolutionary in its day, we can be sure that we are dealing with something closer to cultural artifact than to art, and it must be granted that this is true of Macpherson's work; nevertheless, the fact that Ossian aroused the interest of major men of letters for fifty years is suggestive of his importance as an innovator. In a curious way, Macpherson's achievement has been overshadowed by the fact that many greater writers followed him and developed the artistic direction that he was among the first to take.
NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION
[1] See Scott's letter to Anna Seward in J. G. Lockhart, _Memoirs of
Sir Walter Scott_ (London, 1900), I, 410-15.
[2] The Poems of Ossian, ed. Malcolm Laing (Edinburgh, 1805), I, 441.
[3] See Home's letter to Mackenzie in the _Report of the Committee of the
Highland Society of Scotland_ (Edinburgh, 1805), Appendix, pp. 68-69.
[4] Carlyle to Mackenzie, ibid., p. 66.
[5] Blair to Mackenzie, ibid., p. 57.
[6] Ibid., p. 58.
[7] Quoted from The Poems of Ossian (London, 1807), I, 222. After its
initial separate publication, Blair's dissertation was regularly included with the collected poems.
[8] Correspondence of Thomas Gray, ed. Paget Toynbee and Leonard
Whibley (Oxford, 1935), II, 679-80.
[9] The Works of Lord Byron, Poetry, ed. Ernest Hartley Coleridge
(London, 1898), I, 183.
[10] "On Poetry in General," The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, ed.
P. P. Howe (London, 1930), V, 18.
[11] Quoted in Henry Grey Graham, _Scottish Men of Letters in the
Eighteenth Century_ (London, 1908), p. 240.
[12] Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Alexander
Allardyce (Edinburgh, 1888), I, 547.
[13] "The Influence of Ossian," English, VII (1948), 96.
[14] The Sublime (Ann Arbor, 1960), p. 126.
[15] The Insistence of Horror (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), pp. 86-87.
[16] The Sufferings of Young Werther, trans. Bayard Morgan (New York,
1957), p. 51.
17 Report, Appendix, p. 58.
18 See Robert M. Schmitz, Hugh Blair (New York, 1948), p. 48.
FRAGMENTS OF ANCIENT POETRY
Collected in the Highlands of Scotland,
AND
Translated from the Galic or Erse Language
"Vos quoque qui fortes animas, belloque peremtas?Laudibus in longum vates dimittitis aevuin,?Plurima securi fudistis carmina Bardi."
LUCAN
PREFACE
The public may depend on the following fragments as genuine remains of ancient Scottish poetry. The date of their composition cannot be exactly ascertained. Tradition, in the country where they were written, refers them to an ?ra of the most remote antiquity: and this tradition is supported by the spirit and strain of the poems themselves; which abound with those ideas, and paint those manners, that belong to the most early state of society. The diction too, in the original, is very obsolete; and differs widely from the style of such poems as have been written in the same language two or three centuries ago. They were certainly composed before the establishment of clanship in the northern part of Scotland, which is itself very ancient; for had clans been then formed and known, they must have made a considerable figure in the work of a Highland Bard; whereas there is not the least mention of them in these poems. It is remarkable that there are found in them no allusions to the Christian religion or worship; indeed, few traces of religion of any kind. One circumstance seems to prove them to be coeval with the very infancy of Christianity in Scotland. In a fragment of the same poems, which the translator has seen, a Culdee or Monk is represented as desirous to take down in writing from the mouth of Oscian, who is the principal personage in several of the following fragments, his warlike atchievements and those of his family. But Oscian treats the monk and his religion with disdain, telling him, that the deeds of such great men were subjects too high to be recorded by him, or by any of his religion: A full proof that Christianity was not as yet established in the country.
Though the poems now