“We have been battling about the country of Ossian,” said the priest, “with as much vehemence as the claimants on the birthplace of Homer.”
“O! I know of old,” cried Glorvina, “that you and my father are natural allies on that point of contention; and I must confess, it was ungenerous in both to oppose your united strength against Mr. Mortimer’s single force.”
“What, then,” said the Prince, good humouredly, “I suppose you would have deserted your national standard, and have joined Mr. Mortimer, merely from motives of compassion.”
“Not so, my dear sir,” said Glorvina, faintly blushing, “but I should have endeavoured to have compromised between you. To you I would have accorded that Ossian was an Irishman, of which I am as well convinced as of any other self-evident truth whatever, and to Mr. Mortimer I would have acknowledged the superior merits of Mr. Macpherson’s poems, as compositions, over those wild effusions of our Irish bards, whence he compiled them.
“Long before I could read, I learned on the bosom of my nurse, and in my father’s arms, to recite the songs of our national bards, and almost since I could read, the Ossian of Macpherson has been the object of my enthusiastic admiration.
“In the original Irish poems, if my fancy is sometimes dazzled by the brilliant flashes of native genius, if my heart is touched by the strokes of nature, or my soul elevated by sublimity of sentiment, yet my interest is often destroyed, and my admiration often checked, by relations so wildly improbable, by details so ridiculously grotesque, that though these stand forth as the most undeniable proofs of their authenticity and the remoteness of the day in which they were composed, yet I reluctantly suffer my mind to be convinced at the expense of my feeling and my taste. But in the soul-stealing strains of ‘the Voice of Cona,’ as breathed through the refined medium of Macpherson’s genius, no incongruity of style, character, or manner disturbs the profound interest they awaken. For my own part, when my heart is coldly void, when my spirits are sunk and drooping, I fly to my English Ossian, and then my sufferings are soothed, and every desponding spirit softens into a sweet melancholy, more delicious than joy itself; while I experience in its perusal a similar sensation as when, in the stillness of an autumnal evening, I expose my harp to the influence of the passing breeze, which faintly breathing on the chords, seems to call forth its own requiem as it expires.”
“Oh, Macpherson!” I exclaimed, “be thy spirit appeased, for thou hast received that apotheosis thy talents have nearly deserved, in the eulogium of beauty and genius, and from the lip of an Irishwoman.”
This involuntary and impassioned exclamation extorted from the Prince a smile of gratified parental pride, and overwhelmed Glorvina with confusion. She could, I believe, have spared it before her father, and received it with a bow and a blush. Shortly after she left the room.
Adieu! I thought to have returned to M————house, but I know not how it is——
“Mais un invincible contraint