But hark! the regular twang and dip of oars coming up the river—and lo! indistinct in the distance, something moving through the moonshine—and now taking the likeness of a boat—a barge—with bonneted heads leaning back at every flashing stroke—and, Hamish, list! a choral song in thine own dear native tongue! Sent hither by the Queen of the sea-fairies to bear back in state Christopher North to the Tent? No. 'Tis the big coble belonging to the tacksman of the Awe—and the crew are going to pull her through the first few hours of the night—along with the flowing tide—up to Kinloch-Etive, to try a cast with their long net at the mouth of the river, now winding dim like a snake from King's House beneath the Black Mount, and along the bays at the head of the Loch. A rumour that we were on the river had reached them—and see an awning of tartan over the stern, beneath which, as we sit, the sun may not smite our head by day, nor the moon by night. We embark—and descending the river like a dream, rapidly but stilly, and kept in the middle of the current by cunning helmsman, without aid of idle oar, all six suspended, we drop along through the sylvan scenery, gliding serenely away back into the mountain-gloom, and enter into the wider moonshine trembling on the wavy verdure of the foam-crested sea. May this be Loch-Etive? Yea—verily; but so broad here is its bosom, and so far spreads the billowy brightness, that we might almost believe that our bark was bounding over the ocean, and marching merrily on the main. Are we—into such a dream might fancy for a moment half beguile herself—rowing back, after a day among the savage islanders, to our ship lying at anchor in the offing, on a voyage of discovery round the world?
Where are all the dogs? Ponto, Piro, Basta, trembling partly with cold, partly with hunger, partly with fatigue, and partly with fear, among and below the seats of the rowers—with their noses somewhat uncomfortably laid between their fore-paws on the tarry timbers; but O'Bronte boldly sitting at our side, and wistfully eyeing the green swell as it heaves beautifully by, ready at the slightest signal to leap overboard, and wallow like a walrus in the brine, of which you might almost think he was born and bred, so native seems the element to the "Dowg o' Dowgs." Ay, these are sea-mews, O'Bronte, wheeling white as silver in the moonshine; but we shall not shoot them—no—no—no—we will not shoot you, ye images of playful peace, so fearlessly, nay, so lovingly attending our bark as it bounds over the breasts of the billows, in motion quick almost as your slowest flight, while ye linger around, and behind, and before our path, like fair spirits wiling us along up this great Loch, farther and farther through gloom and glimmer, into the heart of profounder solitude. On what errands of your own are ye winnowing your way, stooping ever and anon just to dip your wing-tips in the waves, and then up into the open air—the blue light filling this magnificent hollow—or seen glancing along the shadows of the mountains as they divide the Loch into a succession of separate bays, and often seem to block it up, till another moonlight reach is seen extending far beyond, and carries the imagination on—on—on—into inland recesses that seem to lose at last all connection with the forgotten sea. All at once the moon is like a ghost;—and we believe—Heaven knows why—in the authenticity of Ossian's Poems.
Was there ever such a man as Ossian? We devoutly hope there was—for if so, then there were a prodigious number of fine fellows, besides his Bardship, who after their death figured away as their glimmering ghosts, with noble effect, among the moonlight mists of the mountains. The poetry of Ossian has, it is true, since the days of Macpherson, in no way coloured the poetry of the island; and Mr Wordsworth, who has written beautiful lines about the old Phantom, states that fact as an argument against its authenticity. He thinks Ossian, as we now possess him, no poet; and alleges, that if these compositions had been the good things so many people have thought them, they would, in some way or other, have breathed their spirit over the poetical genius of the land. Who knows that they may not do so yet? The time may not have come. But must all true poetry necessarily create imitation, and a school of imitators? One sees no reason why it must. Besides, the life which the poetry of Ossian celebrates, has utterly passed away; and the poetry itself, good, bad, or indifferent, is so very peculiar, that to imitate it at all you must almost transcribe it. That, for a good many years, was often done, but naturally inspired any other feeling than delight or admiration. But the simple question is, Do the poems of Ossian delight greatly and widely? We think they do. Nor can we believe that they would not still delight such a poet as Mr Wordsworth. What dreariness overspreads them all! What a melancholy spirit shrouds all his heroes, passing before us on the cloud, after all their battles have been fought, and their tombs raised on the hill! The very picture of the old blind Hero-bard himself, often attended by the weeping virgins whom war has made desolate, is always touching, often sublime. The desert is peopled with lamenting mortals, and the mists that wrap them with ghosts, whose remembrances of this life are all dirge and elegy. True, that the images are few and endlessly reiterated; but that, we suspect, is the case with all poetry composed not in a philosophic age. The great and constant appearances of nature suffice, in their simplicity, for all its purposes. The poet seeks not to vary their character, and his hearers are willing to be charmed over and over again by the same strains. We believe that the poetry of Ossian would be destroyed by any greater distinctness or variety of imagery. And if, indeed, Fingal lived and Ossian sung, we must believe that the old bard was blind; and we suspect that in such an age, such a man would, in his blindness, think dreamily indeed of the torrents, and lakes, and heaths, and clouds, and mountains, moons and stars, which he had leapt, swam, walked, climbed, and gazed on in the days of his rejoicing youth. Then has he no tenderness—no pathos—no beauty? Alas for thousands of hearts and souls if it be even so! For then are many of their holiest dreams worthless all, and divinest melancholy a mere complaint of the understanding, which a bit of philosophical criticism will purge away, as the leech's phial does a disease of the blood.
Macpherson's "Ossian," is it not poetry? Wordsworth says it is not—but Christopher North says it is—with all reverence for the King. Let its antiquity be given up—let such a state of society as is therein described be declared impossible—let all the inconsistencies and violations of nature ever charged against it be acknowledged—let all its glaring plagiarisms from poetry of modern date inspire what derision they may—and far worse the perpetual repetition of its own imbecilities and inanities, wearying one down even to disgust and anger;—yet, in spite of all, are we not made to feel, not only that we are among the mountains, but to forget that there is any other world in existence, save that which glooms and glimmers, and wails and raves around us in mists and clouds, and storms and snows—full of lakes and rivers, sea-intersected and sea-surrounded, with a sky as troublous as the earth—yet both at times visited with a mournful beauty that sinks strangely into the soul—while the shadowy life depictured there eludes not our human sympathies; nor yet, aerial though they be—so sweet and sad are their voices—do there float by as unbeloved, unpitied, or unhonoured—single, or in bands—the ghosts of the brave and beautiful; when the few stars are dim, and the moon is felt, not seen, to be yielding what faint light there may be in the skies.
The boat in a moment is a bagpipe; and not only so, but all the mountains are bagpipes, and so are the clouds. All the bagpipes in the world are here, and they fill heaven and earth. 'Tis no exaggeration—much less a fiction—but the soul and body of truth. There Hamish stands stately at the prow; and as the boat hangs by midships on the very point that commands all the echoes, he fills the whole night with the "Campbells are coming," till the sky yells with the gathering as of all the Clans. His eyes are triumphantly fixed on ours to catch their emotions; his fingers cease their twinkling; and still that wild gathering keeps playing of itself among the mountains—fainter and fainter, as it is flung from cliff to cliff, till it dies away far—far off—as if in infinitude—sweet even and soft in its evanescence as some lover's lute.
We are now in the bay of Gleno. For though moonlight strangely alters the whole face of nature, confusing its most settled features, and with a gentle glamoury blending with the greensward what once was the grey granite, and investing with apparent woodiness what an hour ago was the desolation of herbless cliffs—yet not all the changes that wondrous nature, in ceaseless ebb and flow, ever wrought on her works, could metamorphose out of our recognition that Glen, in which, one night—long—long ago—
"In life's morning march, when our spirit was young!"
we were visited by a dream—a dream that shadowed forth in its inexplicable symbols the whole course of our future life—the graves—the tombs where many we loved are now buried—that churchyard, where we hope and believe that one day our own bones will rest.
But who shouts from the shore, Hamish—and now, as if through his fingers, sends forth a sharp shrill whistle that pierces the sky? Ah, ha! we ken his shadow in the light, with the roe on his shoulder. 'Tis the schoolmaster of Gleno, bringing down our quarry to the boat—kilted, we declare, like a true Son of the Mist. The shore here is shelving but stony, and our prow is aground. But strong-spined and loined, and strong in their withers, are the M'Dougals of Lorn; and, wading up to the red hairy knees, he has flung the roe into the boat, and followed it himself like a deer-hound. So bend to your oars, my hearties—my heroes—the wind freshens, and the tide strengthens from the sea; and at eight knots an hour we shall sweep along the shadows, and soon see the lantern, twinkling as from a lighthouse, on the pole of our Tent.
In a boat, upon a great sea-arm, at night, among mountains, who would be so senseless, so soulless as to speak? The hour has its might,