THE CELTIC MAGAZINE.
No. II.DECEMBER 1875.
THE STATE OF THE OSSIANIC CONTROVERSY.
In controversy about Ossian, the man on the affirmative side has animmeasurable advantage over all others; and, with an average practicalacquaintance with the subject, may exhaust any antagonist. The contents,the connection, and the details; the origin, the tradition, thetranslation; the poetry, the sentiment, the style; the history, thecharacters, the dramatis personæ; the aspects of nature represented,the customs and manners of the people; the conflicting nationalitiesintroduced, the eventful issues, the romantic incidents; the probablescenes, the subsequent changes; the philosophy and the facts, andmultiplied revelations of humanity—all these, and many more such themesinseparably connected with Ossian, if a man rightly understands andbelieves in them, would enable him to maintain his position in actualcontroversy, with integrity and ease, for a twelvemonth. The man, on theother hand, who does not believe in the authenticity of Ossian mustforego all these advantages in succession, and will reduce himself tostraits in an hour. He dare not expatiate or admire, or love, oreulogise, or trust, or credit, or contemplate, or sympathise withanything; or admit a fact, or listen to a word, or look at an argument,on the peril of immediate discomfiture. He must simply shut the book.His only stronghold is denial; his sole logic is assertion; his bestrhetoric is abuse; his ultima ratio is to create distrust, and toinvolve both himself and everybody else in confusion. Genius, forexample, he declares without hesitation to be trickery; poetry to bebombast; pathos, monotonous moaning; the tenderest human love to besham; the most interesting natural incidents, contemptible inventions;the plainest statistical information, a deliberate act of theft; thesublimest conceptions of human character, a fudge; the details of humanhistory for three hundred years, a melodramatic, incredible fiction; andwhat cannot now be found anywhere else recorded, a dream; accidentalcoincidence he speaks of as detected dishonesty; imaginary resemblance,as guilty adaptation; a style suitable to the subject, as plagiarism;occasional inspiration he calls a lie; translation, a forgery; and thewhole, if not a "magnificent mystification," then, in Procurator-Fiscalphrase, a "wilful falsehood, fraud, and imposition." But all this,without proof—and nothing like proof is ever advanced—may be said inan hour, and the argument would remain as it is. Such, in point of fact,[Pg 36]has been the sum total of assault, reiterated by every new antagonistwith increasing boldness for a century, till reasonable readers havebecome callous to it, and only ignorant or prejudiced listeners areimpressed. To be "hopelessly convinced" by it, is perhaps the latestphase of incredulity; to be edified or enlightened by it is impossible.
But, besides the advantage of being able to speak with freedom of anauthor like Ossian, from any natural point of view, an almost infinitelyhigher advantage still is to be obtained by actually verifying his text;by realising his descriptions, ascertaining his alleged facts, andlocalising the scenes of his narrative. Whatever is truly grand inOssian may thus be identified with nature, if it has a counterpartthere; and what seems only an imaginary outline at first may be filledup and fixed for ever as among her own still extant properties. A newsense, coherent and intelligible, may th