The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875

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Various. The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875

INTRODUCTORY

MACAULAY'S TREATMENT OF OSSIAN

MARY LAGHACH

PROFESSOR MORLEY, EDITOR OF "EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE," ON CELTIC LITERATURE AND THE CELTIC PROFESSORSHIP

A PLEA FOR PLANTING IN THE HIGHLANDS.—No. I

MONTROSE AT INVERLOCHY

Correspondence

TO THE EDITORS OF THE CELTIC MAGAZINE

THE OSSIANIC QUESTION

REMNANTS OF GAELIC POETRY

HIGHLAND NOTES AND COMMENTS

THE SUNSET OF THE YEAR

LITERATURE

TRANSACTIONS OF THE GAELIC SOCIETY OF INVERNESS.Vols. III. and IV., 1873-74 and 1874-75 (Bound in one)

SONGS AND POEMS IN THE GAELIC LANGUAGE. ByDuncan Mackenzie, "The Kenlochewe Bard." Written verbatim from the Bard's own Recitation, and Edited, with an Introduction in English, by Alexander Mackenzie, Secretary to the Gaelic Society of Inverness

SCALE OF CHARGES FOR ADVERTISEMENTS, &c

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"It's an ill bird that befouls its own nest." And this is the first count of the indictment we bring against Lord Macaulay for his treatment of Ossian. Macpherson was a Highlandman, and Ossian's Poems were the glory of the Highlands; Macaulay was sprung from a Highland family, and as a Highlandman, even had his estimate of Ossian been lower than it was, he should have, in the name of patriotism, kept it to himself. But great as was Macaulay's enthusiasm, scarce a ray of it was ever permitted to rest on the Highland hills; and glowing as his eloquence, it had no colours and no favours to spare for the natale solum of his sires. Unlike Sir Walter Scott, it can never be said of him that he shall, after columns and statues have perished,—

There are scattered sneers at Ossian's Poems throughout Macaulay's Essays, notably in his papers on Dryden and Dr Johnson. In the latter of these he says:—"The contempt he (Dr J.) felt for the trash of Macpherson was indeed just, but it was, we suspect, just by chance. He despised the Fingal for the very reason which led many men of genius to admire it. He despised it not because it was essentially common-place, but because it had a superficial air of originality." And in his History of England occur the following words:—"The Gaelic monuments, the Gaelic usages, the Gaelic superstitions, the Gaelic verses, disdainfully neglected during many ages, began to attract the attention of the learned from the moment when the peculiarities of the Gaelic race began to disappear. So strong was this impulse that where the Highlands were concerned men of sense gave ready credence to stories without evidence, and men of taste gave rapturous applause to compositions without merit. Epic poems, which any skilful and dispassionate critic would at a glance have perceived to be almost entirely modern, and which, if they had been published as modern, would have instantly found their proper place in company with Blackmore's Alfred and Wilkie's Epigoniad, were pronounced to be fifteen hundred years old, and were gravely classed with the Iliad. Writers of a very different order from the impostor who fabricated these forgeries," &c., &c. Our first objection to these criticisms is their undue strength and decidedness of language, which proclaims prejudice and animus on the part of the writer. Macaulay here speaks like a heated haranguer or Parliamentary partizan, not like an historian or a critic. Hood says—"It is difficult to swear in a whisper"; and surely it is more difficult still to criticise in a bellow. This indeed points to what is Macaulay's main defect as a thinker and writer. He is essentially a dogmatist. He "does not allow for the wind." "Mark you his absolute shall," as was said of Coriolanus. No doubt his dogmatism, as was also that of Dr Johnson, is backed by immense knowledge and a powerful intellect, but it remains dogmatism still. In oratory excessive emphasis often carries all before it, but it is different in writing—there it is sure to provoke opposition and to defeat its own object. Had he spoken of Macpherson's stilted style, or his imperfect taste, few would have contradicted him, but the word "trash" startles and exasperates, and it does so because it is unjust; it is too slump and too summary. Had he said that critics had exaggerated Macpherson's merits, this too had been permitted to pass, but when he declared them in his writings to be entirely "without merit," he insults the public which once read them so greedily, and those great men too who have enthusiastically admired and discriminatingly praised them. Macpherson's connection with these Poems has a mystery about it, and he was probably to blame, but every one feels the words, "the impostor who fabricated these forgeries," to be much too strong, and is disposed, in the resistance and reaction of feeling produced, to become so far Macpherson's friend and so far Macaulay's foe. We regret this seeming strength, but real infirmity, of Macaulay's mode of writing—not merely because it has hurt his credit as a critic of Ossian, but because it has injured materially his influence as an historian of England. The public are not disposed, with all their admiration of talents and eloquence, to pardon in an historian faults of boyish petulance, prejudice, and small personal or political prepossessions, which they would readily forgive in an orator. Macaulay himself, we think, somewhere speaking of Fox's history, says that many parts of it sound as if they were thundered from the Opposition Benches at one or two in the morning, and mentions this as a defect in the book. The same objection applies to many parts of his own history. His sweeping character of Macpherson is precisely such a hot hand-grenade as he might in an excited mood have hurled in Parliament against some Celtic M.P. from Aberdeen or Thurso whose zeal had outrun his discretion.

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Dr Johnson's opposition to Ossian is easily explained by his aversion to Scotland, by his detestation of what he deemed a fraud, by his dislike for what he heard was Macpherson's private character, and by his prejudice against all unrhymed poetry, whether it was blank verse or rhythmical prose. And yet, his own prose was rhythmical, and often as tumid as the worst bombast in Macpherson. He was too, on the whole, an artificial writer, while the best parts of Ossian are natural. He allowed himself therefore to see distinctly and to characterise severely the bad things in the book—where it sunk into the bathos or soared into the falsetto,—but ignored its beauties, and was obstinately blind to those passages where it rose into real sublimity or melted into melodious pathos.

Macaulay has, in various of his papers, shewn a fine sympathy with original genius. He has done so notably in his always able and always generous estimate of Edmund Burke, and still more in what he says of Shelley and of John Bunyan. It was his noble panegyric on the former that first awakened the "late remorse of love" and admiration for that abused and outraged Shade. And it was his article on Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress which gave it—popular as it had been among religionists—a classical place in our literature, and that dared to compare the genius of its author with that of Shakespere and of Milton. But he has failed to do justice to Ossian, partly from some early prejudice at its author and his country, and partly from want of a proper early Ossianic training. To appreciate Ossian's poetry, the best way is to live for years under the shadow of the Grampians, to wander through lonely moors, amidst drenching mist and rain, to hold trystes with thunderstorms on the summit of savage hills, to bathe in sullen tarns after nightfall, to lean over the ledge and dip one's naked feet in the spray of cataracts, to plough a solitary path into the heart of forests, and to sleep and dream for hours amidst the sunless glades, on twilight hills to meet the apparition of the winter moon rising over snowy wastes, to descend by her ghastly light precipices where the eagles are sleeping, and returning home to be haunted by night visions of mightier mountains, wider desolations, and giddier descents. A portion of this experience is necessary to constitute a true "Child of the Mist"; and he that has had most of it—and that was Christopher North—was best fitted to appreciate the shadowy, solitary, and pensively sublime spirit which tabernacles in Ossian's poetry. Of this Macaulay had little or nothing, and, therefore, although no man knew the Highlands in their manners, customs, and history better, he has utterly failed as a critic on Highland Poetry.

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