[In the following excerpt, Saintsbury argues that although Macpherson's Ossian was a fraud, Macpherson nevertheless succeeded in portraying Highland local color effectively and originally.]

… [It may be] difficult to get the modern reader to tackle Ossian. … But few people can be unaware that no such difficulty was felt by original readers of that singular compilation, which, if not real poetry itself, inspired poetry in two generations at least (the second of these being one of the most poetical in the world's history), and spread its influence all over Europe. What seems necessary on the controversial side—and that is but little—may be said below;¹ we must here take Ossian simply at its "face-value," though that face-value itself varies as we look at the obverse and reverse of the coin—the face which appeared to contemporaries who did not question its genuineness, and that which it bears to us when we leave the technical question of genuineness more or less—altogether if possible—out of sight and mind.

It has been said that it requires considerable critical exercise or expertness to appreciate, in any critical fashion, the charm of Gray's Elegy. It may be added that even greater preparation is required before any modern man can really appreciate Ossian. The penalty of enthusiastic and unhesitating acceptance, at once, of such a work of art as this by any generation has—not quite universally but almost so—been future distaste if not disgust. The extraordinarily fashionable almost inevitably becomes the irreconcilably unfashionable. With singular felicity or singular clevemess (he showed himself, in fact, in all relations of life, except his exceedingly foolish and rash attempt to bully Johnson, a very clever man indeed) Macpherson managed to shoot his bolt with just that aim, a little ahead of the object, which is sure to hit as the object itself progresses. His recipe (to change the metaphor) was exactly what the crude and indiscriminate but greedy appetite of the last third of the century demanded without knowing its own demand, and consumed ravenously when it was presented with the supply. But this very description implies a certainty of satiety, and its usual consequences, later.

To the modern reader, then, for some generations past, Ossian has been a shot bolt—a fashion out of fashion—a food which is turned from, if not exactly with loathing, at any rate with no appetite. Even such things as "Celtic renascences" have done it little if any good, because of its less than doubtful genuineness and its perfectly certain adulteration, even if there is any genuineness in it at all. For readers of some reading its countless bad imitations,² and the trail which these imitations left upon succeeding literature, have put it still more out of favour; and to the comparatively illiterate (no disrespect to them) it offers few present delights.

These considerations can hardly lose their force; and many as are the changes which the student of the history of literature has seen, it is very difficult to imagine eager and intense enjoyment of Ossian reappearing at any time. Yet the person who neglects it entirely, loses something. For the actual student—not a "researcher," but an intelligent reader—whom we have frequently had in view, the immense influence of the book or books, the evidence given of the desires and needs of the time, and other such things, would make Ossian readable, even if it were savourless in itself. But it is not. Actual forger as Macpherson may have been and probably was; charlatan and "faker" as he was beyond all doubt—he was, after all and before all, an actual Highlander: he had, at a time when not many had done so, traversed and observed the Highlands pretty thoroughly, and he had, beyond all question, if only by the combined instincts of the native and the "literary gent," succeeded in grasping and expressing the local colour in a singularly effective and original way.³ His history is patched and colourless myth; he has no connected romantic story to tell, and does not show much sign of being able to tell it if he had; while his characters are hardly even shadows. But no one who has watched the snakes of mist coil and twine and mock round the summits of the Coolins; no one who has seen the black rocks sleep and the brown rivers plunge and foam; no one who has trudged over leagues of moor and peat-hag in search of some "Burn of the Deceivers,"¹⁴ which is almost impossible to find, and acts up to its name as a guide when found,—can admit that the scenery and atmosphere of Fingal and Temora and the rest are merely theatrical. There is more in it than any scene-painter, even if he be a very Stanfield, can give; more even than the most accomplished artist, with no taint of the theatre about him, has given—the charm of "the word" expressing the experience and the emotions of the senses and the soul.

This, though the gift referred to may perhaps have obtruded itself in too overwhelming measure, and have been made to do duty for a great many other gifts, the want of which is only too much felt, is a great thing to say of any book or book-writer. There may be added to it another and more questionable attraction—that of the curious verse-prose in which the composition is couched. To different persons—even to the same person in different moods—this will of course appeal differently. It will sometimes tease; it will very frequently seem, what the scenery has been denied to be, theatrical; it must be admitted to be unequally managed. But it sometimes suits the peculiar description itself very well; and it must be admitted to be a very clever mask and "pass" for the shadowiness of figure, the insufficiency of character, and the absence of story, which plain prose would set ruthlessly in the daylight, and to which almost any regular form of verse would be almost equally dangerous. Of course any one may say that this brings us back to the central fact that Ossian is after all (as somebody once punned it) a mere "mistification." It is, except for some definite purpose, an impossible book to read through; and in any case a very unlikely book to which to recur often. But almost everybody who cares for the Humanities of modern as well as ancient literature should read it, or a good part of it, at least once; and it would be surprising if some such readers did not sometimes turn to it again, if only as to a shrine (to talk in the vein of its own century), desolate and unlit now, but once thronged with worshippers and fragrant with glowing incense…

Notes

¹ If not the whole truth, the best conclusion of this infinitely debated matter seems to be the statement which ends the last paragraph of the article on Ossian in Chambers's Encyclopoedia, by my late friend and colleague Professor Donald Mackinnon, admittedly one of the most careful, and certainly one of the most enthusiastic, of Gaelic scholars: "The truth seems to be that these so-called translations (Fingal, Temora, etc.), are essentially the compositions of James Macpherson; and that the Gaelic texts subsequently published were prepared with or without aid from his friends, but how and when we do not now know." The body of the article while, of course, insisting on the fact that Ossian (Oisin), Fingal (Finn), and others were actually traditional heroes of Irish and Scotch Gaelic story, points out that the form of the English Ossian has nothing to do with any ancient Gaelic poetry, that its vague and abstract treatment is in direct opposition to an almost prosaic concreteness in actual Gaelic poetry, and that the Gaelic versions referred to are essentially modern, and, as slang says now, "bad modern at that."

² Even more wonderful than the imitations are the attempts made by some honest devotees to do more "justice" to Macpherson's Gaelic "originals" by retranslating into modern English verse or prose of a kind. You lose what at its best, though "faked" and rococo, is literature—sometimes very nearly very fine literature. You get balderdash and drivel.

³ The late Mr. Tovey, discussing Gray's eager tumbling to the bait at first, and his rejection of it afterwards, thinks it strange that the English poet did not notice indebtedness to his own Bard. I cannot see very much of this, though if Macpherson's restless industry had led him to explore the recesses where the MS. of Collins's Superstitions of the Highlands was lying perdu, he might have taken important hints. Perhaps he did, for he had much dealing with Home, and was very Ulysses in policy. Gray himself saw resemblances to Thomson. (N.B.—Ossian, though always used, is not an original title for Fingal, Temora, etc.)

⁴ "Allt-na-Gallagach" or "Gealgach"—a name the repeated occurrence of which in the Highlands has suggested to the brutal Saxon deductions suitable to his brutality.