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James Macpherson : an Episode in Literature

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James Macpherson : an Episode in Literature Works on Ossian and Ossianic Literature published by David Nutt WAIFS AND STRAYS OF CELTIC TRADITION. Inedited Scotch-Gaelic Texts, with accompanying English Translations and Explanatory Notes. Argyllshire Series. 8vo. Cloth. Net prices. Vol. II. FOLK AND HERO TALES. Collected, edited (in Gaelic), and translated by the Rev. D. MacInnes ; with a Study on the Development of the Ossianic Saga and copious Notes by Alfred Nutt. 1890. xxiv, 497 pp. Portrait of Campbell of Islay, and two Illustrations by E. GRISET. 12s. 6d. [Nearly out ofprint. # *» The Study forms the first attempt to give a survey of the entire mass of Ossianic literature, and a scientific account of the origin and development of the Ossianic legend. Vol. III. FOLK AND HERO TALES. Collected, edited, translated, and annotated by the Rev. J. MacDougall ; with an Introduction by Alfred Nutt. 1891. xxx, 311 pp. 7s. 6d. Vol. IV. THE FIANS ; OR, STORIES, Poems, and Tra- ditions of Fionn and his Warrior Band. Collected entirely from oral sources by the Rev. J. G. Campbell ; with Introduction and Bibliographical Notes by Alfred Nutt. 1891. xxxviii, 292 pp. 7s. 6d. Vol. V. POPULAR TALES AND TRADITIONS. Collected in the Western Highlands by the late Rev. J. G. Campbell of Tiree ; with Portrait and Memoir of the Author, and Illustrations by E. Griset. 8vo. 1895. xx, 150 pp. 5s. [Nearly out ofprint. #% These volumes form the fullest and most valuable collection of Scotch-Gaelic traditional lore save Campbell of Islay's " Popular Tales." OSSIAN AND THE OSSIANIC LITERATURE. By Alfred Nutt. (Popular Studies, No. 3.) i6mo. 6d. net; 7d. post free. *** The only brief account in print of the genuine Ossianic literature. JAMES MACPHERSON AN EPISODE IN LITERATURE BY J. S. SMART LONDON DAVID NUTT, LONG ACRE 1905 Printed by Ballantvne, Hanson & Co. At the Ballantyne Press PREFACE This book is an examination of Macpherson's poems, for so we must call the three volumes which he assigned to another authorship. His life and character, although not the main subject, are studied by the way. Macpherson possessed two things that are rarely joined,—a sensitive and poetic mind, and a shrewd capacity for business. He first appears as an unknown youth, with everything to do for himself, reserved and shy in appearance, but amazingly clever and consumed with ambition. Thirty years later he was success- ful beyond his dreams, triumphantly aware that his writings were admired by all Europe, rich, prosperous, enjoying and displaying his pros- perity. Yet the poems which launched him on his career are as full of laments as the Book of Job, and their melancholy had a genuine cause. A nature so versatile, with so much power over others, and with characteristics so strongly marked, commands our notice. Macpherson had genius which sometimes broke vi PREFACE into brilliant flame. He was one of the first men of letters who made Scotland famous in other countries. His writings were once as widely known as those of Ibsen and Maeterlinck at the present day. Now he is regarded with contempt as a detected impostor ; yet Chatterton, who was also an impostor, has been forgiven ; and Mac- pherson was a greater poet than Chatterton. His moral demerits, which were not small, need not blind us to his one rare excellence. But if an amnesty be suggested for him, it must be preceded by several admissions. It is too late to maintain, as Mr. Bailey Saunders and Mr. Eyre-Todd have done in recent books and essays, that he was injured and calumniated, the victim of prejudice and unreasoning ill-will. If the world be asked to choose between him and Samuel Johnson, it will declare at once for the latter. We need not wonder that the controversy about Ossian has lasted so long. It hinges upon a question of identity, which gives room for much divergence of view. Macpherson worked over older poems in the composition of new ones. Some have held him to be a fair translator ; others that the changes he made gave birth to a different thing. The former point to legendary names and traces of ancient tales ; the latter are conscious of a PREFACE vii modern atmosphere. But the work is really Mac- pherson's. The older poetry vanished as he wrote, and a poetry which was his, the offspring of his own mind, took its place. Shakespeare recast an Italian novel and converted it into a tragedy ; but Othello is the work of Shakespeare, not of Cinthio. Paradise Lost is not the Book of Genesis, although both tell the story of Adam and Eve. The earlier English critics of Macpherson felt that his pretensions were false ; but, in their ignorance of Celtic antiquity, they could not prove it. They fell back on general considera- tions, which can be met by other generalities. But to traverse their arguments now, is to begin at the wrong end. The vital criticisms, which pierce to the root of the matter, are not the first but the most recent. Modern research has opened up a region of which little was known when Ossian appeared. The Gaelic literature of the Middle Ages is now accessible to all, and the key to Macpherson's secret is in our hands. When the riddle has thus been read, we may return to the eighteenth century, and we shall perceive, by a clear and equable light, where justice and veracity lay. My obligations to those whose labours have made this book possible cannot be too fully vii ^ viii PREFACE confessed. To some I am specially indebted. Mr. W. A. Craigie and Dr. Magnus Maclean have freely given invaluable assistance ; Mr. Alfred Nutt kindly read the whole manuscript and made sug- gestions by which I have greatly profited; and Dr. MacBain answered several inquiries in the most courteous^ manner. Thanks are also due to the friends who assisted in revising the proofs. J. S. S. April 22, 1905. CONTENTS 1. II. JAMES MACPHERSON CHAPTER I THE AGE AND THE RACE I James Macpherson is a poet whose fame in his own epoch now astonishes posterity. He appeared at a time of transition ; an old school was going out, a new one coming in ; and the new school made him one of its heroes and pioneers. The classical literature of the early eighteenth century had passed its prime, and was dying, like all things, of its own limitations. The reaction against it which led to the romantic movement was beginning. If it were possible to describe the poetry of Pope's age in a single phrase, it might be called one which had its roots in criticism rather than imagination. It aimed at a revival or emulation of Latin and Greek literature by using the works of antiquity as models and its critics as law-givers. The taste of the rising generation now demanded something less studied, more spontaneous and more exciting. The younger A 2 JAMES MACPHERSON men were seeking also for a wider outlook upon society and history. Classical writers had neglected a large part of experience. They wrote for scholars and courtiers, ignoring whatever fell outside the range of scholarship and the tastes of gentlemen in their own age. Looking backward, they saw between themselves and the Roman Empire only a gulf of semi-barbarism from which the world had just emerged once more into the light of day. Everything medieval was despised as the product of ignorant men among an uninstructed people. From all the authors of Europe before Erasmus, and from the mass of popular poetry that might exist beyond the inner world of cities and colleges, there was nothing to be learned, and in them nothing to enjoy. " Men who think," said Voltaire, " and what is rarer, men who have taste, count but four centuries in the history of the world." These were the centuries in which culture had been perfected,—those of Pericles in Greece, of Caesar and Augustus at Rome, of the Renaissance in Italy, and of Louis XIV. Around them were only dim and obscure spaces, into which those who had been born in more favoured times would care little to pene- trate. New conceptions of life forced the old standards to give ground and opened the way for a new poetry. The revolution was begun by Jean Jacques Rousseau, whose teaching became opera- THE AGE AND THE RACE 3 tive in many fields and influenced every country in Europe. Rousseau stoutly laid the axe to the root of the tree. What the men of the classical period had believed in, he reversed and denied. What they admired, he rejected. For Rousseau the magic principle that resolved all difficulties was not authority, imitation or law, but Nature. " Return to Nature," is his constant cry. Mankind had wandered far from Nature, and every step from it had been a declension ; back to Nature it must somehow find a path. Those ages of re- finement and art, of brilliant city and social life, which Voltaire had thought the only periods worth regarding, were to Rousseau the most pernicious. They were times of corruption and decay. Happiest of all was the natural man who lived before society had been formed, before the inven- tion of property, before the competition for power and possessions had begotten all the vices and had crushed the virtues that spring in the human heart. The primitive, untrained, untutored man was benevolent and good ; for Nature made him so. Society depraved him, and in modern civi- lised life, in such cities as Rome had been and Paris now was, he reached the lowest level of all.
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