Part 1 (2/2)

Gray concluded his remarks with the a.s.sertion that ”this Man is the very Demon of Poetry, or he has lighted on a treasure hid for ages.”[8]

Nearly fifty years later Byron wrote a ”humble imitation” of Ossian for the admirers of Macpherson's work and presented it as evidence of his ”attachment to their favorite author,” even though he was aware of the imposture. In a note to ”The Death of Calmar and Orla,” he commented,

”I fear Laing's late edition has completely overthrown every hope that Macpherson's Ossian might prove the translation of a series of poems complete in themselves; but while the imposture is discovered, the merit of the work remains undisputed, though not without faults--particularly, in some parts, turgid and bombastic diction.”[9]

In 1819 Hazlitt felt that Ossian is ”a feeling and a name that can never be destroyed in the minds of his readers,” and he cla.s.sed the work as one of the four prototypes of poetry along with the Bible, Homer, and Dante. On the question of authenticity he observed,

”If it were indeed possible to shew that this writer was nothing, it would be another instance of mutability, another blank made, another void left in the heart, another confirmation of that feeling which makes him so often complain, 'Roll on, ye dark brown years, ye bring no joy on your wing to Ossian!'”[10]

There is some justice in Macpherson's wry a.s.sertion that ”those who have doubted my veracity have paid a compliment to my genius.”[11] By examining briefly the distinctive form of the ”Fragments,” their diction, their setting, their tone, and their structure, we may sense something of the qualities of the poems that made them attractive to such men as Gray, Byron, and Hazlitt.

IV

Perhaps Macpherson's most important innovation was to cast his work into what his contemporaries called ”measured prose,”

and it was recognized early that this new form contributed greatly to their appeal. In discussing the _Fragments_, Ramsey of Ochtertyre commented,

”Nothing could be more happy or judicious than his translating in measured prose; for had he attempted it in verse, much of the spirit of the original would have evaporated, supposing him to have had talents and industry to perform that very arduous task upon a great scale. This small publication drew the attention of the literary world to a new species of poetry.”[12]

For his new species of poetry Macpherson drew upon the stylistic techniques of the King James Version of the Bible, just as Blake and Whitman were to do later. As Bishop Lowth was the first to point out, parallelism is the basic structural technique.

Macpherson incorporated two princ.i.p.al forms of parallelism in his poems: _repet.i.tion_, a pattern in which the second line nearly restates the sense of the first, and _completion_ in which the second line picks up part of the sense of the first line and adds to it. These are both common in the _Fragments_, but a few examples may be useful.

I have rearranged the following lines and in the other pa.s.sages relating to the structure of the poems in order to call attention to the binary quality of Macpherson's verse:

_Repet.i.tion_

Who can reach the source of thy race, O Connal?

And who recount thy Fathers? (”Fragment V”)

Oscur my son came down; The mighty in battle descended. (”Fragment VI”)

Oscur stood forth to meet him; My son would meet the foe. (”Fragment VIII”)

Future times shall hear of thee; They shall hear of the fallen Morar. (”Fragment XII”)

_Completion_

What voice is that I hear?

That voice like the summer wind. (”Fragment I”)

The warriours saw her, and loved; Their souls were fixed on the maid.

Each loved her, as his fame; Each must possess her or die.

But her soul was fixed on Oscur; My son was the youth of her love. (”Fragment VII”)

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