Regarding Emigration, we have a matured opinion that while it is a calamity for the country generally, and for employers of labour and farmers in particular that able-bodied men and women should be leaving the country in their thousands, we unhesitatingly assert that it is far wiser for these men and women to emigrate to countries where their labour is of real value to them, and where they can spend it improving land which will not only be found profitable during their lives, but which will be their own and their descendants freehold for ever, than to continue starving themselves and their children on barren patches and crofts of four or five acres of unproductive land in the Highlands. We have experienced all the charms of a Highland croft, as one of a large family, and we unhesitatingly say, that we cannot recommend it to any able-bodied person who can leave it for a more promising outlet for himself and family. While we are of this opinion regarding voluntary emigration, we have no hesitation in designating forced evictions by landlords as a crime deserving the reprobation of all honest men.
We shall also have something to say regarding the Commercial Interests of the Highlands—its trade and manufactures, and the abominable system of long Credit which is, and has proved, so ruinous to the tradesman; and which, at the same time, necessarily enhances the price of all goods and provisions to the retail cash buyer and prompt payer. On all these questions, and many others, we shall from time to time give our views at further length, as well as the views of those who differ from us. We shall, at least, spare no effort to deserve success.
The Highland Ceilidh will be commenced in the next number, and continued from month to month. Under this heading will be given Highland Legends, Old Unpublished Gaelic Poetry, Riddles, Proverbs, Traditions, and Folk-lore.
MACAULAY'S TREATMENT OF OSSIAN.
"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,—
A mightier monument command—
The mountains of his native land.
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.