A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century Part 24

[43] "Sweet William's Ghost."

[44] "Tam Lin."

[45] "Fair Annie."

[46] "Child Waters."

[47] See Phelps' "English Romantic Movement," pp. 33-35.

[48] Appendix to the Preface to the 2nd edition of "Lyrical Ballads."

[49] "Peter Bell."

[50] Scherer: "Geschichte der Deutschen Literatur," p. 445.

[51] In his third book Herder gave translations of over twenty pieces in the "Reliques," besides a number from Ramsay's and other collections.

His selections from Percy included "Chevy Chase," "Edward," "The Boy and the Mantle," "King Estmere," "Waly, Waly," "Sir Patric Spens," "Young Waters," "The Bonny Earl of Murray," "Fair Margaret and Sweet William,"

"Sweet William's Ghost," "The Nut-Brown Maid," "The Jew's Daughter,"

etc., etc.; but none of the Robin Hood ballads. Herder's preface testifies that the "Reliques" was the starting-point and the kernel of his whole undertaking. "Der Anblick dieser Sammlung giebts offenbar da.s.s ich eigentlich von _Englishchen_ Volksliedern ausging und auf sie zuruckkomme. Als vor zehn und mehr Jahren die 'Reliques of Ancient Poetry' mir in die Hande fielen, freuten mich einzelne Stucke so sehr, da.s.s ich sie zu ubersetzen versuchte."--_Vorrede zu den Volksliedern.

Herder's Sammtlichee Werke_, Achter Theil, s. 89 (Carlsruhe, 1821).

[52] Stanzas 44-46, book i. bring in references to ballad literature in general and to "The Nut-Brown Maid" and "The Children in the Wood" in particular.

[53] Book I. stanzas 32-34.

CHAPTER IX.

Ossian

In 1760 appeared the first installment of MacPherson's "Ossian."[1]

Among those who received it with the greatest curiosity and delight was Gray, who had recently been helping Mason with criticisms on his "Caractacus," published in 1759. From a letter to Walpole (June 1760) it would seem that the latter had sent Gray two ma.n.u.script bits of the as yet unprinted "Fragments," communicated to Walpole by Sir David Dalrymple, who furnished Scotch ballads to Percy. "I am so charmed,"

wrote Gray, "with the two specimens of Erse poetry, that I cannot help giving you the trouble to inquire a little farther about them; and should wish to see a few lines of the original, that I may form some slight idea of the language, the measures and the rhythm. Is there anything known of the author or authors; and of what antiquity are they supposed to be? Is there any more to be had of equal beauty, or at all approaching it?"

In a letter to Shonehewer (June 29,) he writes: "I have received another Scotch packet with a third specimen . . . full of nature and n.o.ble wild imagination."[2] And in the month following he writes to Wharton: "If you have seen Stonehewer, he has probably told you of my old Scotch (rather Irish) poetry. I am gone mad about them. They are said to be translations (literal and in prose) from the _Erse_ tongue, done by one MacPherson, a young clergyman in the Highlands. He means to publish a collection he has of these specimens of antiquity, if it be antiquity; but what plagues me, is, I cannot come at any certainty on that head. I was so struck, so _extasie_ with their infinite beauty, that I writ into Scotland to make a thousand enquiries." This is strong language for a man of Gray's coolly critical temper; but all his correspondence of about this date is filled with references to Ossian which enable the modern reader to understand in part the excitement that the book created among Gray's contemporaries. The letters that he got from MacPherson were unconvincing, "ill-wrote, ill-reasoned, calculated to deceive, and yet not cunning enough to do it cleverly." The external evidence disposed him to believe the poems counterfeit; but the impression which they made was such that he was "resolved to believe them genuine, spite of the Devil and the Kirk. It is impossible to convince me that they were invented by the same man that writes me these letters. On the other hand, it is almost as hard to suppose, if they are original, that he should be able to translate them so admirably."

On August 7 he writes to Mason that the Erse fragments have been published five weeks ago in Scotland, though he had not received his copy till the last week. "I continue to think them genuine, though my reasons for believing the contrary are rather stronger than ever." David Hume, who afterward became skeptical as to their authenticity, wrote to Gray, a.s.suring him that these poems were in everybody's mouth in the Highlands, and had been handed down from father to son, from an age beyond all memory and tradition. Gray's final conclusion is very much the same with that of the general public, to which the Ossianic question is even yet a puzzle. "I remain still in doubt about the authenticity of these poems, tho' inclining rather to believe them genuine in spite of the world.

Whether they are the inventions of antiquity, or of a modern Scotchman, either case is to me alike unaccountable. _Je m'y perds._"

We are more concerned here with the impression which MacPherson's books, taking them just as they stand, made upon their contemporary Europe, than with the history of the controversy to which they gave rise, and which is still unsettled after more than a century and a quarter of discussion.

Nevertheless, as this controversy began immediately upon their publication, and had reference not only to the authenticity of the Ossianic poems, but also to their literary value; it cannot be altogether ignored in this account. The princ.i.p.al facts upon which it turned may be given in a nut-sh.e.l.l. In 1759 Mr. John Home, author of the tragedy of "Douglas," who had become interested in the subject of Gaelic poetry, met in Dumfriesshire a young Scotchman, named James MacPherson, who was traveling as private tutor to Mr. Graham of Balgowan. MacPherson had in his possession a number of ma.n.u.scripts which, he said, were transcripts of Gaelic poems taken down from the recital of old people in the Highlands. He translated two of these for Home, who was so much struck with them that he sent or showed copies to Dr. Hugh Blair, Professor of Rhetoric in the University of Edinburgh. At the solicitation of Dr.

Blair and Mr. Home, MacPherson was prevailed upon to make further translations from the materials in his hands; and these, to the number of sixteen, were published in the "Fragments" already mentioned, with a preface of eight pages by Blair. They attracted so much attention in Edinburgh that a subscription was started, to send the compiler through the Highlands in search of more Gaelic poetry.

The result of the researches was "Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem in Six Books: Together with several other poems, composed by Ossian the son of Fingal. Translated from the Gaelic language by James MacPherson,"

London, 1762; together with "Temora, an Ancient Epic Poem in Eight Books," etc., etc., London, 1763. MacPherson a.s.serted that he had made his versions from Gaelic poems ascribed to Ossian or Oisin, the son of Fingal or Finn Macc.u.mhail, a chief renowned in Irish and Scottish song and popular legend. Fingal was the king of Morven, a district of the western Highlands, and head of the ancient warlike clan or race of the Feinne or Fenians. Tradition placed him in the third century and connected him with the battle of Gabhra, fought in 281. His son, Ossian, the warrior-bard, survived all his kindred. Blind and old, seated in his empty hall, or the cave of the rock; alone save for the white-armed Malvina, bride of his dead son, Oscar, he struck the harp and sang the memories of his youth: "a tale of the times of old."

MacPherson translated--or composed--his "Ossian" in an exclamatory, abrupt, rhapsodical prose, resembling somewhat the English of Isaiah and others of the books of the prophets. The manners described were heroic, the state of society primitive. The properties were few and simple; the cars of the heroes, their spears, helmets, and blue shields; the harp, the sh.e.l.ls from which they drank in the hall, etc. Conventional compound epithets abound, as in Homer: the "dark-bosomed" ships, the "car-borne"

heroes, the "white-armed" maids, the "long-bounding" dogs of the chase.

The scenery is that of the western Highlands; and the solemn monotonous rhythm of MacPherson's style accorded well with the tone of his descriptions, filling the mind with images of vague sublimity and desolation: the mountain torrent, the dark rock in the ocean, the mist on the hills, the ghosts of heroes half seen by the setting moon, the thistle in the ruined courts of chieftains, the gra.s.s whistling on the windy heath, the blue stream of Lutha, and the cliffs of sea-surrounded Gormal. It was noticed that there was no mention of the wolf, common in ancient Caledonia; nor of the thrush or lark or any singing bird; nor of the salmon of the sealochs, so often referred to in modern Gaelic poetry.

But the deer, the swan, the boar, eagle, and raven occur repeatedly.

But a pa.s.sage or two will exhibit the language and imagery of the whole better than pages of description. "I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they were desolate. The fire had resounded in the halls, and the voice of the people is heard no more. The stream of Clutha was removed from its place by the fall of the walls. The thistle shook there its lonely head; the moss whistled to the wind. The fox looked out from the windows, the rank gra.s.s of the wall waved round its head. Desolate is the dwelling of Moina, silence is in the house of her fathers. Raise the song of mourning, O bards, over the land of strangers. They have but fallen before us; for, one day, we must fall. Why dost thou build the hall, son of the winged days? Thou lookest from thy towers to-day; yet a few years, and the blast of the desert comes; it howls in thy empty court, and whistles round thy half-worn shield."[3] "They rose rustling like a flock of sea-fowl when the waves expel them from the sh.o.r.e. Their sound was like a thousand streams that meet in Cona's vale, when, after a stormy night, they turn their dark eddies beneath the pale light of the morn. As the dark shades of autumn fly over hills of gra.s.s; so, gloomy, dark, successive came the chiefs of Lochlin's[4] echoing woods. Tall as the stag of Morven, moved stately before them the King.[5] His shining shield is on his side, like a flame on the heath at night; when the world is silent and dark, and the traveler sees some ghost sporting in the beam. Dimly gleam the hills around, and show indistinctly their oaks. A blast from the troubled ocean removed the settled mist. The sons of Erin appear, like a ridge of rocks on the coast; when mariners, on sh.o.r.es unknown are trembling at veering winds."[6]

The authenticity of the "Fragments" of 1760 had not pa.s.sed without question; but MacPherson brought forward entire epics which, he a.s.serted, were composed by a Highland bard of the third century, handed down through ages by oral tradition, and finally committed--at least in part--to writing and now extant in ma.n.u.scripts in his possession, there ensued at once a very emphatic expression of incredulity. Among the most truculent of the disbelievers was Dr. Johnson. He had little liking for Scotland, still less for the poetry of barbarism. In his tour of the Western Islands with Boswell in 1773, he showed an insensibility, and even a kind of hostility, to the wild beauties of Highland scenery, which gradually affects the reader with a sense of the ludicrous as he watches his st.u.r.dy figure rolling along on a small Highland pony by sequestered Loch Ness, with its fringe of birch trees, or between the prodigious mountains that frown above Glensheal; or seated in a boat off the Mull of Cantyre, listening to the Erse songs of the rowers:

"Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides."

"Dr. Johnson," says Boswell, "owned he was now in a scene of as wild nature as he could see; but he corrected me sometimes in my inaccurate observations. 'There,' said I, 'is a mountain like a cone.' Johnson: 'No, sir. It would be called so in a book, but when a man comes to look at it, he sees it is not so. It is indeed pointed at the top, but one side of it is larger than the other.' Another mountain I called immense.

Johnson: 'No; it is no more than a considerable protuberance.'"

Johnson not only disputed the antiquity of MacPherson's "Ossian," but he denied it any poetic merit. Dr. Blair having asked him whether he thought any man of a modern age could have written such poems, he answered: "Yes, sir: many men, many women and many children." "Sir," he exclaimed to Reynolds, "a man might write such stuff forever, if he would _abandon_ his mind to it." To Mr. MacQueen, one of his Highland hosts, he said: "I look upon MacPherson's 'Fingal' to be as gross an imposition as ever the world was troubled with." Johnson's arguments were mostly _a priori_. He a.s.serted that the ancient Gael were a barbarous people, incapable of producing poetry of the kind. Long epics, such as "Fingal"

and "Temora," could not be preserved in memory and handed down by word of mouth. As to ancient ma.n.u.scripts which MacPherson pretended to have, there was not a Gaelic ma.n.u.script in existence a hundred years old.

It is now quite well established that Dr. Johnson was wrong on all these points. To say nothing of the Homeric poems, the ancient Finns, Scandinavians, and Germans were as barbarous as the Gael; yet they produced the Kalewala, the Edda, and the Nibelungen Lied. The Kalewala, a poem of 22, 793 lines--as long as the Iliad--was transmitted orally from a remote antiquity and first printed in 1849. As to Gaelic ma.n.u.scripts, there are over sixty in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh, varying in age from three hundred to five hundred years.[7] There is, _e.g._, the "Glenmasan Ma.n.u.script" of the year 1238, containing the story of "Darthula,"[8] which is the groundwork of the same story in MacPherson's "Ossian." There is the important "Dean of Lismore's Book,"

a ma.n.u.script collection made by Dean MacGregory of Lismore, Argyleshire, between 1512 and 1529, containing 11,000 lines of Gaelic poetry, some of which is attributed to Ossian or Oisin. One of the poems is identical in substance with the first book of MacPherson's "Temora;" although Mr.

Campbell says, "There is not one line in the Dean's book that I can identify with any line in MacPherson's Gaelic."[9]

Other objections to the authenticity of MacPherson's translations rested upon internal evidence, upon their characteristics of thought and style.

It was alleged that the "peculiar tone of sentimental grandeur and melancholy" which distinguishes them, is false to the spirit of all known early poetry, and is a modern note. In particular, it was argued, MacPherson's heroes are too sensitive to the wild and sublime in nature.

Professor William R. Sullivan, a high authority on Celtic literature, says that in the genuine and undoubted remains of old Irish poetry belonging to the Leinster or Finnian Cycle and ascribed to Oisin, there is much detail in descriptions of arms, accouterments, and articles of indoor use and ornament, but very little in descriptions of outward nature.[10] On the other hand, the late Princ.i.p.al Shairp regards this "sadness of tone in describing nature" as a strong proof of authenticity.

"Two facts," he says, "are enough to convince me of the genuineness of the ancient Gaelic poetry. The truthfulness with which it reflects the melancholy aspects of Highland scenery, the equal truthfulness with which it expresses the prevailing sentiment of the Gael, and his sad sense of his people's destiny. I need no other proofs that the Ossianic poetry is a native formation, and comes from the primeval heart of the Gaelic race."[11] And he quotes, in support of his view, a well-known pa.s.sage from Matthew Arnold's "Study of Celtic Literature": "The Celts are the prime authors of this vein of piercing regret and pa.s.sion, of this t.i.tanism in poetry. A famous book, MacPherson's 'Ossian,' carried, in the last century, this vein like a flood of lava through Europe. I am not going to criticise MacPherson's 'Ossian' here. Make the part of what is forged, modern, tawdry, spurious in the book as large as you please; strip Scotland, if you like, of every feather of borrowed plumes which, on the strength of MacPherson's 'Ossian,' she may have stolen from that _vetus et major Scotia_--Ireland; I make no objection. But there will still be left in the book a residue with the very soul of the Celtic genius in it; and which has the proud distinction of having brought this soul of the Celtic genius into contact with the nations of modern Europe, and enriched all our poetry by it. Woody Morven, and echoing Lora, and Selma with its silent halls! We all owe them a debt of grat.i.tude, and when we are unjust enough to forget it, may the Muse forget us! Choose any one of the better pa.s.sages in MacPherson's 'Ossian,' and you can see, even at this time of day, what an apparition of newness and of power such a strain must have been in the eighteenth century."

But from this same kind of internal evidence, Wordsworth draws just the opposite conclusion. "The phantom was begotten by the snug embrace of an impudent Highlander upon a cloud of tradition. It traveled southward, where it was greeted with acclamation, and the thin consistence took its course through Europe upon the breath of popular applause.[12]. . . 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. Gray 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. . .' 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: everything (that is not stolen) is in this manner defined, insulated, dislocated, deadened, yet nothing distinct. It will always be so when words are subst.i.tuted 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 p.r.o.nouncing a censure which MacPherson defied. . . Yet, much as these pretended treasures of antiquity have been admired, they have been wholly uninfluential upon the literature of the country. No succeeding writer appears to have caught from them a ray of inspiration; no author in the least distinguished has ventured formally to imitate them, except the boy Chatterton, on their first appearance. . . This incapability to amalgamate with the literature of the Island is, in my estimation, a decisive proof that the book is essentially unnatural; nor should I require any other to demonstrate it to be a forgery, audacious as worthless. Contrast, in this respect, the effect of MacPherson's publication with the 'Reliques'

of Percy, so una.s.suming, so modest in their pretensions."

Other critics have pointed out a similar indistinctness in the human actors, no less than in the landscape features of "Fingal" and "Temora."

They have no dramatic individuality, but are all alike, and all extremely shadowy. "Poor, moaning, monotonous MacPherson" is Carlyle's alliterative description of the translator of "Ossian"; and it must be confessed that, in spite of the deep poetic feeling which pervades these writings, and the undeniable beauty of single pa.s.sages, they have d.a.m.nable iteration. The burden of their song is a burden in every sense.

Mr. Malcolm Laing, one of MacPherson's most persistent adversaries, who published "Notes and Ill.u.s.trations to Ossian" in 1805, essayed to show, by a minute a.n.a.lysis of the language, that the whole thing was a fabrication, made up from Homer, Milton, the English Bible, and other sources. Thus he compared MacPherson's "Like the darkened moon when she moves, a dim circle, through heaven, and dreadful change is expected by men," with Milton's

"Or from behind the moon, In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs."

Laing's method proves too much and might be applied with like results to almost any literary work. And, in general, it is hazardous to draw hard and fast conclusions from internal evidence of the sort just reviewed.

Taken altogether, these objections do leave a strong bias upon the mind, and were one to p.r.o.nounce upon the genuineness of MacPherson's "Ossian,"

as a whole, from impressions of tone and style, it might be guessed that whatever element of true ancient poetry it contains, it had been thoroughly steeped in modern sentiment before it was put before the public. But remembering Beowulf and the Norse mythology, one might hesitate to say that the songs of primitive, heroic ages are always insensible to the sublime in nature; or to admit that melancholy is a Celtic monopoly.

The most damaging feature of MacPherson's case was his refusal or neglect to produce his originals. The testimony of those who helped him in collecting and translating leaves little doubt that he had materials of some kind; and that these consisted partly of old Gaelic ma.n.u.scripts, and partly of transcriptions taken down in Gaelic from the recitation of aged persons in the Highlands. These testimonies may be read in the "Report of the Committee of the Highland Society," Edinburgh, 1805.[13] It is too voluminous to examine here, and it leaves unsettled the point as to the precise use which MacPherson made of his materials, whether, _i.e._, he gave literal renderings of them, as he professed to do; or whether he manipulated them--and to what extent--by piecing fragments together, lopping, dove-tailing, smoothing, interpolating, modernizing, as Percy did with his ballads. He was challenged to show his Gaelic ma.n.u.scripts, and Mr. Clerk says that he accepted the challenge. "He deposited the ma.n.u.scripts at his publishers', Beckett and De Hondt, Strand, London. He advertised in the newspapers that he had done so; offered to publish them if a sufficient number of subscribers came forward; and in the _Literary Journal_ of the year 1784, Beckett certifies that the ma.n.u.scripts had lain in his shop for the s.p.a.ce of a whole year."[14]

But this was more than twenty years after. Mr. Clerk does not show that Johnson or Laing or Shaw or Pinkerton, or any of MacPherson's numerous critics, ever saw any such advertis.e.m.e.nt, or knew where the ma.n.u.scripts were to be seen; or that--being ignorant of Gaelic--it would have helped them if they had known; and he admits that "MacPherson's subsequent conduct, in postponing from time to time the publication, when urged to it by friends who had liberally furnished him with means for the purpose . . . is indefensible." In 1773 and 1775, _e.g._, Dr. Johnson was calling loudly for the production of the ma.n.u.scripts. "The state of the question," he wrote to Boswell, February 7, 1775, "is this. He and Dr. Blair, whom I consider as deceived, say that he copied the poem from old ma.n.u.scripts. His copies, if he had them--and I believe him to have none--are nothing. Where are thee ma.n.u.scripts? They can be shown if they exist, but they were never shown. _De non existentibus et non apparentibus eadem est ratio._" And during his Scotch trip in 1773, at a dinner at Sir Alexander Gordon's, Johnson said: "If the poems were really translated, they were certainly first written down. Let Mr. MacPherson deposit the ma.n.u.scripts in one of the colleges at Aberdeen, where there are people who can judge; and if the professors certify their authenticity, then there will be an end of the controversy. If he does not take this obvious and easy method, he gives the best reason to doubt."

Indeed the subsequent history of these alleged ma.n.u.scripts casts the gravest suspicion on MacPherson's good faith. A thousand pounds were finally subscribed to pay for the publication of the Gaelic texts. But these MacPherson never published. He sent the ma.n.u.scripts which were ultimately published in 1807 to his executor, Mr. John Mackenzie; and he left one thousand pounds by his will to defray the expense of printing them. After MacPherson's death in 1796, Mr. Mackenzie "delayed the publication from day to day, and at last handed over the ma.n.u.scripts to the Highland Society,"[15] which had them printed in 1807, nearly a half century after the first appearance of the English Ossian.[16] These, however, were not the identical ma.n.u.scripts which MacPherson had found, or said that he had found, in his tour of exploration through the Highlands. They were all in his own handwriting or in that of his amanuenses. Moreover the Rev. Thomas Ross was employed by the society to transcribe them and conform the spelling to that of the Gaelic Bible, which is modern. The printed text of 1807, therefore, does not represent accurately even MacPherson's Gaelic. Whether the transcriber took any further liberties than simply modernizing the spelling cannot be known, for the same mysterious fate that overtook MacPherson's original collections followed his own ma.n.u.script. This, after being at one time in the Advocates' Library, has now utterly disappeared. Mr. Campbell thinks that under this double process of distillation--a copy by MacPherson and then a copy by Ross--"the ancient form of the language, if it was ancient, could hardly survive."[17] "What would become of Chaucer," he asks, "so maltreated and finally spelt according to modern rules of grammar and orthography? I have found by experience that an alteration in 'spelling' may mean an entire change of construction and meaning, and a subst.i.tution of whole words."

But the Gaelic text of 1807 was attacked in more vital points than its spelling. It was freely charged with being an out-and-out fabrication, a translation of MacPherson's English prose into modern Gaelic. This question is one which must be settled by Gaelic scholars, and these still disagree. In 1862 Mr. Campbell wrote: "When the Gaelic 'Fingal,'

published in 1807, is compared with any one of the translations which purport to have been made from it, it seems to me incomparably superior.

It is far simpler in diction. It has a peculiar rhythm and a.s.sonance which seem to repel the notion of a mere translation from English, as something almost absurd. It is impossible that it can be a translation from MacPherson's English, unless there was some clever Gaelic poet[18]

then alive, able and willing to write what Eton schoolboys call 'full-sense verses.'" The general testimony is that MacPherson's own knowledge of Gaelic was imperfect. Mr. Campbell's summary of the whole matter--in 1862--is as follows: "My theory then is, that about the beginning of the eighteenth century, or the end of the seventeenth, or earlier, Highland bards may have fused floating popular traditions into more complete forms, engrafting their own ideas on what they found; and that MacPherson found their works, translated and altered them; published the translation in 1760;[19] made the Gaelic ready for the press; published some of it in 1763,[20] and made away with the evidence of what he had done, when he found that his conduct was blamed. I can see no other way out of the maze of testimony." But by 1872 Mr. Campbell had come to a conclusion much less favorable to the claims of the Gaelic text. He now considers that the English was first composed by MacPherson and that "he and other translators afterward worked at it and made a Gaelic equivalent whose merit varies according to the translator's skill and knowledge of Gaelic."[21] On the other hand, Mr. W. F. Skene and Mr.