Wie des Wiederhalls in der Sommernacht war seines Schildes Ton,
Wie des vollen Mondes der Glanz!
and so “Carric–Thura,” p. 151, l. 27, “That shield like the full–orbed moon,” etc., and echoing shields without number.
One striking feature of the Highland scenery according to Ossian is the fact that everything—forest and heath, bay and stream, grove and vale, hill and isle, rocks and fields and banks and walls and numerous other things—is very susceptible to the echo, “the son of the rock,” and the fondness that Klopstock and the bards begin to exhibit for the echo about this time must be traced back largely to Ossian. In addition to the passage just quoted, we have in Sc. 2, e. g., “Wir haben ... den Gesang in den Felsen des Wiederhalls gehört,” “Lasst die Namen ... in allen Felsen des Wiederhalls laut tönen,” etc. In the same scene the bards sing:
Ruf in des Wiederhalls Felsengebirg
Durch das Graun des nächtlichen Hains,
Dass . . . . . .
Es ertöne wie ein Donnersturm!
In Sc. 11: “Wiederhalls Kluft,” etc.
A few words as to the poet’s attitude towards Ossian in his old age may complete our consideration of Klopstock. As he grew older, and other affairs, above all else the French Revolution, began to engross his attention, Ossian gradually lost interest for him, although he was never entirely forgotten. As late as 1797, Klopstock writes to Böttiger under date of November 9:[109] “Wissen Sie schon etwas von der Ausgabe von Ossians Gesängen, die jetzt in England in seiner Sprache gemacht wird? Ist die Übersezung getreu? Sind Anmerkungen über das Zeltische dabey?” Unfortunately he died before the long–heralded edition was finally published. When his enthusiastic admiration for Ossian subsided and took on a saner aspect, when his views on the subject of the relation of the Celts to the old German tribes assumed a more scientific character, he could not allow Ossian to occupy the position assigned to him at first. Although Klopstock’s fondness for the Celtic Homer diminished in the course of years, it nevertheless possessed a more lasting character than that of Goethe and of Schiller, to whom, as we shall see, it was merely a passing inspiration. Klopstock’s sober second thought revealed to him that he had occasionally gone too far in his blind adoration, and so we find that in later revisions of his works Ossianic reminiscences are occasionally expunged. The eulogistic verses that appeared in the first edition of the Gelehrtenrepublik (1774)[110] were omitted in the second; the ode “Teutone” (1773) gives the first fifty–two lines of “Unsre Sprache” (1767) almost literally, but substitutes sixteen new lines for the eight lines of encomium found in the latter.[111] In the first two Bardiete, the bards play an almost overwhelming rôle with their numerous songs, whereas in Hermanns Tod the bards appear in one scene only, the fifteenth. Then two passages appeared in the first edition of the Hermannsschlacht that were omitted or revised in the second, as e. g., the chorus beginning “Höret Thaten der vorigen Zeit!” in Sc. 2.—Late in life Klopstock in his correspondence with Böttiger occasionally refers to Ossian. One letter has been quoted from. Under date of January 6, 1798, he writes to Böttiger: “Hierbey Macd[onald] und einige Aufschr[iften]. Ich werde eher keinen bestimten Begriff von Ossian bekommen, als bis man mir (könte es nicht Macd. thun?) merklich verschiedene Stellen aus ihm völlig wörtlich übersezt. Sie sehen, dass ich nur Stellen meinen kan, die Oss. gewiss zugehören.”[112] If we read between the lines, we can see feelings of doubt and if we are to place entire confidence in a letter of Sir James Mackintosh to Malcolm Laing,[113] Klopstock at last lost his faith in the authenticity of the songs of Ossian altogether—a strange ending to his earlier unbounded enthusiasm. Sir James writes: “I consider your Ossian and Farmer’s ‘Essay’ on Shakspeare’s pretended learning as the two most complete demonstrations of literary positions that have ever been produced ... You know how bitterly old Klopstock complained of you for having dispelled his Ossianic illusions ...”
§2. The Bards.[114]—Gerstenberg.
The bardic poetry, the way for which had been prepared by Mallet’s influential work, the Introduction à l’histoire de Danemarc with its Supplément: Monumens de la Mythologie et de la Poësie des Celtes et particulièrement des Anciens Scandinaves, and which had received its impulse from Macpherson’s Ossian, aided by the mistaken acceptation of the barditus mentioned by Tacitus, soon gained other supporters, among whom the most prominent were Gerstenberg, Denis and Kretschmann. The various other representatives of the poetry, which, carried to an extreme, became ridiculous and was justly characterized as the Bardengebrüll or Bardengeschrei, were on the whole devoid of talent and scarcely call for serious treatment.
Much of what has been said with reference to Klopstock’s reception of Ossian applies also to the bards, only we see that the thing deteriorated into a fad through imitation. It began to take on the character of mere play; the poets styled themselves bards and gave themselves bardic names, e. g., Klopstock—Werdomar, Gerstenberg—Thorlaug, Denis—Sined,[115] Kretschmann—Rhingulph, Hartmann—Telynhard, Dusch—Ryno, Haschka—Cronnan, etc.[116]