The influence exercised in Germany by Shakspere and by Bishop Percy’s Reliques in several particulars goes hand in hand with that of Ossian. Herder grasped all three in close connection, but we shall postpone our account of their inter–relation to the paragraphs on Herder. A few words are due, however, to Young’s Night Thoughts and his Conjectures on Original Composition,[23] in the latter of which the poets of the Storm and Stress found much fuel for their fire. Original genius is a shibboleth frequently met with in the German literature of the time. In Shakspere the Germans believed they had discovered a true original genius, and he came to be regarded as the perfect type of the natural poet, who, throwing aside existing rules and conventionalities, became a law unto himself. But when they came to Ossian, they discovered a man that really stood in much closer communion with nature than even Shakspere, for the former lived in surroundings that precluded the establishment of fixed rules of poetical composition. If the poems of Ossian were genuine—and it took a very long time to convince the Germans of the fact that they were not—here they had certainly to deal with a poet who was a genius born not made—an undeniable original. Dr. Blair had in his “Critical Dissertation” undertaken to make a comparison of the characteristics of the work of Ossian and Homer, and nowhere did his conclusion fall upon more willing ears than in Germany. Soon a most delightful controversy arose over the relative excellence of Homer and Ossian, and it was intensified by the appearance of Robert Wood’s Essay on the Original Genius and Writings of Homer (1769), in which, too, Homer was proclaimed as a product of the soil. Homer generally came out second best in the comparison, critics vieing with one another in discovering some new phase wherein Homer could with apparent justice be placed beneath Ossian.[24] And how many German translations of Ossian had appeared before one respectable version of Homer came into being! The latter’s heroes were branded not only as cruel and artful, but as possessed of other unattractive qualities that relegated them to a lower level than the characters depicted by Ossian, who never failed to develop the attributes that distinguish the true hero, and so on ad absurdum. Fortunately the aberration was only temporary. No doubt the frequent comparisons are responsible for the Homeric dress occasionally given to Ossian’s warriors in illustrations; e. g., in No. 14 of Ruhl’s sketches, Oscar wears a Greek helmet, coat–of–mail, etc.
A translation of the Night Thoughts[25] by Johann Arnold Ebert (1723–95) had appeared in 1760 and its influence soon began to manifest itself in the odes of Klopstock and his pupils. The profound melancholy underlying the Thoughts was the leading cause of its popularity in Germany and in a measure paved the way for the related strain that runs through Ossian. In this respect, then, the influence of the one accentuated that of the other, although the popularity of Young waned noticeably after the appearance of Ossian. Closely bound up with the spirit of melancholy is that of sentimentality, and here again Ossian’s sway is unmistakable. Before the appearance of Werthers Leiden (1774), the influence of Ossian had been felt in several directions, but it was reserved for Goethe to open up a new field for the Gaelic bard. Feeling began to enter the arena,[26] and Ossian’s ‘joy of grief’[27] began to symbolize for many a German youth and maiden “the shower of spring, when it softens the branch of the oak, and the young leaf rears its green head.” Goethe, through his incomparable translation of “The Songs of Selma” in Werthers Leiden, served to increase the admiration that had so willingly been offered on the shrine of Ossian. But we must not anticipate the paragraphs on Goethe.
And now that the famous bard had once been started upon his triumphal career, nothing of importance occurred for some years to disturb the general tenor of his fame. The work of translation and imitation went on and there was always some one prepared to enter the lists as his champion. For a long time it was considered bad form for a German critic to doubt the authenticity of the poems. Not one had the courage of his convictions, not one was prepared to damn with faint praise. A number of literati had their private doubts as to the genuineness of the poems, but they feared to share their opinions with the public—as witness the following passage in a letter of Klotz to Denis, dated Halle, July 6, 1769: “Aufrichtig unter uns geredet (denn dem Publico mag ich, darf ich es nicht sagen) ich kann mich immer noch nicht überreden, dass diese Gedichte völlig ächt wären, dass gar keine neuere Hand an ihnen polirt, gewisse Bilder abgeändert, andere hinzugesetzt hätte u. s. w.”[28] And Denis says in his reply: “Ich hatte ihn auch, diesen Zweifel; allein D. Blair’s Abhandlung, und Macphersons Betheurungen haben mich hierüber ziemlich beruhiget. Dennoch mag wohl an den Übergängen, an den Verbindungen der Stücke hin und wieder eine neuere Hand polieret haben.”[29] Ossian filled so many long–felt wants, that it was not to be expected that the Germans would give him up easily, and yet this one–sided chorus of praise could not satisfy perpetually.
When the poets of the Romantic School arrive upon the scene, Ossian has, to be sure, lost some of his old–time glory, yet he is still ready to respond to the calls made upon him. Macpherson died in 1796, and soon afterwards steps were taken looking towards the publication of the supposed Gaelic originals. Rumors of the circumstance reached Germany and called forth wide–spread interest. The dying embers were for the last time blown into a bright flame, to which fact the mass of Ossianic literature which appeared from 1800 to 1808 clearly attests. Much of the renewed interest must be ascribed to the influence of Ahlwardt, who prepared a translation from the original Gaelic (1811). The excellence of this translation was trumpeted throughout the land long before its appearance, a specimen was published as early as 1807 and widely reviewed, so that when the complete translation finally appeared, little was left to be said. Ahlwardt’s translation really marks the beginning of the end. What a lowering from their former position the poems had suffered even at the beginning of the century, is shown by a statement made by Schröder in the preface to his translation of Fingal (1800), where he refers to Ossian as one of those poets that are praised more than read. We still meet with an occasional translation and imitation, to be sure, but they are of little weight when compared with the hold the Ossianic craze once had on the German people. Ossian came generally to have more interest for the philologist than for the man of letters. More than one critic no longer concealed his doubts of the authenticity, until finally Mrs. Robinson’s (Talvj’s) work upon the non–genuineness of the poems was published (1840), which treatise marks the turning–point in German Ossian criticism. Since Talvj’s days the Celtic scholars of Germany have sought to make good the errors into which their predecessors of the previous century had fallen, and to them we owe much of the light that has been shed upon the long–mooted question in comparatively recent years. At the present day Ossian is read but little in Germany, and where he is known attention has generally been called to him by Goethe’s famous translation of “The Songs of Selma.” He still attracts the average reader if read in snatches, but few will be found who can derive pleasure from the reading of his entire works. Macpherson’s Ossian has become the property of the literary historian, and the genuine old folk–songs connected with his name that of the Celtic scholar.
§2. Earliest Notices and Translations.
It is generally stated that the first German notice of the Poems of Ossian was given by Raspe in No. 92 of the Hannoverisches Magazin for 1763. This is, to be sure, the first extended review, but a notice of Fingal had appeared the year before in the Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften.[30] It is interesting to note what attracted this first critic, who regards the characters of the epic as full of strength and feeling, and endowed with all the virtues that go to make up true heroism. He marvels at the bold poetic expression, and seems to detect in it a resemblance to the oriental style. In a review of Temora which appeared in the same magazine in the following year, the author tells us that, on the one hand, the various critical dissertations written by Macpherson and, on the other, the nature of the poetry itself have convinced him of the authenticity of the songs, which he thinks ought to be made more widely known through German translations. He is attracted particularly by “the grandeur and sublimity of thought, the spark of genius, the power of expression, the boldness of metaphor, the sudden transitions, the irresistible and unexpected touches of pathos and tenderness, and the similarity in similes and phrasing.” In these notices we encounter several remarks that are characteristic of the Ossian craze in Germany. In the first place, doubts as to the authenticity are not to be entertained.[31] Equally interesting is the impression made upon the critic by the ‘spark of genius,’ the ‘power of expression,’ the ‘boldness of metaphor’; in other words, the Gaelic bard was considered fairly well endowed with those qualities that constitute the ideal poet of the Storm and Stress, and he might well be placed by the side of Shakspere as a natural poet. We note further that the pathos and tenderness exhibited in the poems of Ossian attracted attention from the beginning, and this very pathos and sentimentality and melancholy did much to establish Ossian in the popular favor. The German is by nature inclined to be sentimental, and to the German of the 18th century the joy of grief, the [Greek: himeros nooio] was a large reality.
Two years before the appearance of Engelbrecht’s translation of the Fragments, there appeared in the Bremisches Magazin a German prose translation of two fragments that had been published in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1760. In a notice of Fingal in Volume 6 of the same magazine (1763), the epic is characterized as “beautiful, pathetic, and sublime.” The characterization of Temora given in the following year is but an echo of the sentiments expressed in the Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften.
One of the first to draw attention not only to the poems of Ossian but to Bishop Percy’s Reliques as well,[32] was Rudolf Erich Raspe. Raspe had studied at Göttingen and spent some years in Hannover, so that nothing was more natural than that he should take an interest in English literature. His first notice of Ossian appeared in No. 92 (1763) of the Hannoverisches Magazin. The tone throughout is one of hearty appreciation, and supreme confidence is placed in the authenticity of the poems, which he defends enthusiastically, basing his arguments upon the various dissertations prefixed to the works of Ossian. The supposed originality of the Gaelic bard appealed strongly to him. “With justice,” says Raspe, “can he be styled an original, he is new throughout.”[33] And in another place: “Ossian is in the opinion of many great connoisseurs a genius of the first order.”[34] Here then we have our Originalgenie without further search. Raspe was thus struck by what he was pleased to regard as Ossian’s naturalness. The fact that Dr. Blair in his “Dissertation” had not hesitated to place Ossian on a par with Homer causes Raspe to marvel that Ossian was gifted enough to raise himself to the height demanded by an epic poem “without the machinery, the gods, and the comparisons of the Roman and Greek poets.”[35] He regarded Ossian as the embodiment of the ideal that Winckelmann saw in the Greek masterpieces, a soul characterized by ‘noble simplicity and quiet grandeur.’ Ossian’s noble sentiments are set up as an example worthy of emulation in these degenerate times.
In Nos. 94 to 97 (1763) of the same magazine, Raspe gave a translation of extracts, ‘disjecta membra Hippolyti,’ from the six books of Fingal in rhythmic prose. The portions omitted are briefly summarized. The translation possesses no special merits and we can pass over at once to the first translations that appeared in book form, that of the Fragments by Engelbrecht (1764), and that of Fingal by Wittenberg (1764), both of which appeared anonymously and both in rhythmic prose. Neither of these translations met with a particularly flattering reception; the magazines seem to have taken no notice of them whatever, the editions were probably limited, and we have no record of a second edition in either case. Wittenberg, indeed, intended to publish two additional volumes, the second to contain Temora with several smaller poems and the third the remaining fragments, together with Dr. Blair’s “Dissertation,” but his plans bore no fruit. Wittenberg was no great literary light and would have been forgotten long ago had he not been mixed up in the Lessing–Goeze controversy.[36] In his preface he tells us that he took pains to make the translation as literal as possible—quite a wise proceeding for one who had no hope of improving upon the original and no ability to turn Macpherson’s prose into respectable verse. When he remarks in the preface that the poems of Ossian are, even thus early, too well known among the Germans to call for further commendation to the reader, we may see how quickly Ossian had found a place in the public favor. However, Wittenberg can not abstain from recording his appreciation, and takes up the cudgels in defense of the authenticity.