A Translation (From the Italian) of the Abbcesarotti's Historical and Critical

AA j^-^ s?'rS /' .'^ i i-1^ /• , , r //,J^ // c re/ tf ff rf-/^/-/vt-r/ /^/t, / r : A TRANSLATION (FROM THE ITALIAN) OF THE ABBE CESAROTTI'S HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL DISSERTATION, Respecting the Controversy on the Authenticity of Ossian's Poems, BY JOHN M'ARTHUR, LL. D. ONE OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE HIGHLAND SOCIETY OF LOUDON, APPOINTED TO SUPERINTEND THE PUBLICATION OF OSSIAN IN THE ORIGINAL GAELIC. IVith Notes and Observations by the Translator. LONDON PRINTED BY WILLIAM BULMER AND CO. CLEVELAND ROW, ST. JAMES's. 1806. '^. Vf^ 1941 o. —; [3] TRANSLATION OF THE ABBE CESAROTTrS HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL DISSERTATION.* The appearance of Ossian's poems was a plieno- menoii so unexpected and extraordinary, that it is not surprising, they should have excited, during even a period of enthusiasm, doubts and astonish- ment. In a country scarcely known to history, mountainous, difficult of access, and almost con- stantly shaded with mists; in a state of society the most unpolished, wretched, and barbarous ; without trade, without learning, without arts and sciences how could such a transcendent genius arise, who may be said to dispute the palm with the most celebrated poets of the most civilized nations ; and with those even, who for so many ages have been con- sidered the models of the art ? This novelty was too much at variance with the generally received opinion to be implicity believed without controversy. Was there truly an Ossian ? Was he really the author of the poems which have been published under his name ? Can this be a spurious work? But when? How ? —By whom ? —These are questions that for a length of time have agitated and divided public * See Note A, at the end of the Dissertation. ; 4 TRANSLATION OF THE opinion in England ; while Europe regarded with vene- ration this surprising phenomenon. These are doubts too which have existed among the literati and critics; doubts which, although they may appear to be con- siderably diminished, still exist in the minds of many learned persons. Whatever may be the opinion adopted, it is certain, that either side present various embarrassing diffi- culties, and may cause the most strenuous advocates to waver. Doctor Blair, a celebrated professor of rhetoric and belles-lettres in the University of Edinburgh, in his excellent Dissertation, published at the end of the second volume of Ossian, examining the character of the poems, entertains not the smallest doubt of their authenticity. "The compositions of Ossian," Dr. Blair observes, " are so strongly marked with characters of antiquity, that, although there were no external proof to support that antiquity, hardly any reader of judgment and taste could hesitate in re- ferring them to a very remote a^ra. There are four stages through which men successively pass in the progress of society. The first and earliest is the life of hunters ; pasturage succeeds to this, as the ideas of property begin to take root ; next, agriculture and lastly, commerce. Throughout Ossian's poems, we plainly find ourselves in the first of those periods of society ; during which hunting was the chief employment of men, and the principal method of their procuring subsistence. Pasturage was not indeed wholly unknown, for we hear of dividing the herd in the case of a divorce ; but the allusions to ABBE CESAROTTIS DTSSERTATION. 5 herds and cattle are not many ; and of agriculture we find no traces. No cities appear to have heen built, in the territories of Fingal. No arts are mentioned, except those of navigation and of working in iron. Every thing presents to us the most simple and unimproved manners. At their feasts, the heroes prepared their own repast ; they sat round the light of the burning oak ; the wind lifted their locks, and whistled through their open halls. Whatever was beyond the necessaries of life was known to them only as the spoil of the Roman })rovince ! The picture of the social state of this people is consistent from the beginning to the end, in all the poems of Ossian."—No modern alhision ever drops from the poet; but every where the same aspect of rude and savage nature appears; a country wholly unculti- vated, thinly inhabited, and recently peopled. " The circle of ideas and transactions," continues Dr. Blair, " is no wider than suits such an age. Va- lour and bodily strength are the admired quahties. The heroes show refinement of sentiment indeed on several occasions, but none of manners, They speak of their past actions with freedom, and sing their OAvn praise. A rape, a private insult, was the cause of war among their tribes. They had no expedient for giving the military alarms, but striking a shield, or raising a loud cry. Of military discipline or skill they appear to have been entirely destitute. " The manner of poetical composition bears all the marks of the greatest antiquity. No artful trans- itions, nor full and extended connection of parts, such as we find among the poets of later times, v/hen 6 TRANSLATION OF THE order and regularity of composition were more studied and known ; but a style always rapid and vehement, in narration concise even to abruptness, and leaving several circumstances to be supplied by the reader's imagination. The language has all the figurative cast, which, partly a glowing and undis- cij)lined imagination, partly the sterility of language, and the want of proper terms, have always introduced into the early speech of nations ; and, in several respects, it carries a remarkable resemblance to the style of the Old Testament. It deserves particular notice, as one of the most genuine and decisive characters of antiquity, that very few general terms, or abstract ideas, are to be met with in the whole collection of Ossian's poems. The ideas of men, at first, were all particular. They had not words to express general conceptions. These were the conse- quence of more profound reflection, and longer acquaintance with the arts of thought and of speech. Ossian accordingly never expresses himself in the abstract. His ideas extended little farther than the objects he saw round him. Even a mountain, a sea, or a lake, which he has occasion to mention, though only in a simile, are for the most part particularized ; it is the hill of Cromla, the storm of the sea of Maimer, or the reeds of the lake of Lego. —All these are marks so undoubted, and some of them too so nice and delicate, of the most early times, as to put the high antiquity of these poem.s out of question. Especially when we consider, that if there had been any impos- ture in this case, it must have been contrived and executed in the Highlands of Scotland, two or three ABBE CESAROTTI S DISSERTATION, 7 centuries ago ; as up to that period, both by manu- scripts, and by the testimony of a multitude of living witnesses, concerning the uncontrovertible tradition of these poems, they can clearly be traced. To sup- pose that two or three hundred years ago, when we well know the Highlands to have been in a state of gross ignorance and barbarity, there should have arisen in that country a poet, of such exquisite genius, and of such deep knowledge of mankind and of history, as to divest himself of the ideas and manners of his own age, and to give us a just and natural picture of a state of society ancienter by a thousand years ; one, who could support this counterfeited antiquity through such a large collection of poems, without the least inconsistency ; and who, possessed of all this genius and art, had, at the same time, the self-denial of concealing himself, and of ascribing his own works to an antiquated bard, without the im- posture being detected ; is a supposition that tran- scends all credibility. " Another circumstance of the greatest weight against this hypothesis is, the total absence of reli- gious ideas from this work ; for which the translator has, in his preface, given a very probable account, on the footing of its being the work of Ossian. The druidical superstition was, in the days of Ossian, on the point of its final extinction ; and the Christian faith was not yet established in those climates. But had it been the work of one, to whom the ideas of Christianity were familiar from his infancy ; and who had superadded to them also the bigotted superstition of a dark age and country ; it is impossible, but in 8 TKAXSLATION OF THE some passage or other, the traces of them would have appeared."* This sensible reasoning appears to be unanswerable. But although the argument, drawn from the ignorance and barbarity of the Highlanders in the fif- teenth centur}', tends to prove that Ossian's poems, as ushered into the world, cannot be the production of a national poet of that era; it does not prove the impossibility of their being an ingenious forgery of a more modern writer ; for instance, Mr. Macpher- son, availing himself of the fabuloas traditions of the vulgar, and the notion of some rude ballads anciently popular, unknown, and unworthy to be noticed by the civilized part of Great Britain, might have been pleased to exercise his genius in a new and fantastic style, by composing a collection of Caledonian poems, from the singular vanity and caprice of deceiving the public, by ascribing them to a chimeiical bard, the son of a petty Highland prince equally chimerical. Such is the opinion adopted by the opponents of the high antiquity and original character of those poems.

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