Count Ugolino. Ibid., xxxiii.
Ossian. James Macpherson (1736-1796) published between 1760 and 1765 what he alleged to be a translation of the ancient Gaelic hero-bard, Oisin or Ossian. The poems fed the romantic appetite of the generation and were translated into practically every European language. In Germany especially the influence of “Ossian” wrought powerfully through the enthusiasm it aroused in the young Goethe and in Schiller. In England, the poems, immediately upon their appearance, gave rise to a long controversy as to their authenticity, Dr. Johnson being among the first to attack the belief in their antiquity. The truth seems to be that, though there really is a legendary hero answering to Ossian, no such poems as Macpherson attributed to him were ever transmitted. The whole work is to all intents the original creation of Macpherson himself. The supposed Gaelic originals, which were published by the Highland Society of London in 1807, have been proved by philologists to be spurious, to be nothing in fact but translations into bad Gaelic from Macpherson’s good English. This conclusion is further supported by the mass of borrowings from the Bible and the classics which have been found in “Ossian.” See J. C. Smart: “James Macpherson, An Episode in Literature” (1905).
[P. 276.] lamentation of Selma. Lament of Colma in “Songs of Selma,” Ossian, ed. William Sharp, p. 410.
Roll on. Cf. ibid., p. 417: “ye bring no joy on your course!”
MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS
[The identification of quotations has been omitted for this essay in order to allow students an opportunity to try it for themselves.]
The third and fourth paragraphs of this essay had appeared in a letter of Hazlitt’s to the Examiner (Works, III, 152). The entire essay was first published in the third number of the Liberal (see note to p. 244).
[P. 277.] W—m. Wem.
[P. 281.] Murillo (1617-1682) and Velasquez (1599-1660) are the two greatest Spanish painters.
nothing—like what he has done. In the essay “On Depth and Superficiality” (“Plain Speaker”), Hazlitt characterizes Coleridge as “a great but useless thinker.”