THE poems here translated from the Gaelic, though they do not pretend to any remote antiquity, are well known to have existed before the translations, and even the Translator of OSSIAN. Thinking it may afford you some amusement, I take up the pen to make a few observations on those celebrated productions of the Celtic Muse. The time is fast approaching when it will be impossible to throw new light on this question. The most conclusive evidence which the nature of the subject will admit of, is fast fading away. It consists of traditions co‐relative to the poems,—a kind of poetical phraseology derived from them,—and a resembling strain of sentiment in other compositions of great though not equal antiquity, which no one could ever have had any motive to fal‐ sify or alter. There is another clear, though now decaying evidence. Old people can very well remember, before Mr. MACPHERSON ever thought of translating these remains, when many comparisons and allusions to be found in them, were as current as Scripture quotations in the last age among the peasants of the west. "She is beautiful as AGANDECCA the daughter of the snow—She is musical as MALVINA—He is as forlorn as OSSIAN after the departure of the FINGALLIANS—Such a one is alert and nimble as CUCHULLIN"—were phrases in common use. Whatever embellishments, or whatever anachronisms the injudicious vanity of a translator may have grafted on these poems, no person who lived in the country of their reputed author, ever doubted their existence or antiquity; there, every stream and mountain, every tale, song, or adage, retained some traces of the generous hero, or the mournful bard: but there was little chance of getting at the truth of this question, while the contention lay betwixt learned pride on the one hand, and national vanity on the other. The former was accustomed to consider letters, not as the vehicle, but the essence of knowledge, accounting all unlearned people utterly savage and barbarous, and unable to conceive how any one could entertain noble or generous sentiments without deriving them from classical models. The latter was unwilling to confess how little the Gaelic had been used in writing, and to what a narrow district of the kingdom it had been, even in remote ages, confined; which was the real cause why no connected series of these poems had been written down, and why they had been so long hid in obscurity. To the same motive may be attributed the silent acquiescence of the Highlanders in the alterations and embellishments added to these poems, by a translator more ambitious of adapting them to modern taste, than of adhering strictly to the sense of the originals; more studious of his own advantage, than of the addition to be made to the science of human nature, by developing truly and closely the manners of the Heroic Age; by which I understand that intervening betwixt rude barbarity, and the regular establishment of law, property, and agriculture.

It is obvious that the greatest literary attainments do not enable a man to judge whether a work, written in a language he does not understand, differing in its form and construction from every other with which he is acquainted, be faithfully translated or not. It was highly absurd in the opponents of OSSIAN to cry out for written evidence, i. e. original manuscripts, of a work composed long before the signs of words were heard of in the country where they were composed. It is no shame for a man of learning and taste to be ignorant of the rude unwritten language of a savage people: certainly not; but he ought to be ashamed to decide upon facts without obtaining the necessary previous information. We have no right to strip the laurels off the tombs even of savages, until we clearly ascertain that they ought not to have been planted there: let FINGAL continue to be a hero, and OSSIAN a poet, were it but by the old rule of prescription, till those who challenge their right acquire their language, and are thus enabled to decide upon the question.

But it has been asked, why were the poems not committed to writing when the knowledge of letters was introduced, being so much admired by the people, and cherished as sacred vestiges of their heroic age, and venerated memorials of their ancestors? Here the ignorant defenders of OSSIAN erred; their national vanity would not allow them to confess, that except the monks of Icolmkill, who held the heathen poems of OSSIAN in abhorrence, and laboured to eradicate the prevailing passion for works of fancy, there were very few who did write Gaelic, and the writings of these few were merely confined to theology and to family archives, unless in some rare instances, where a young chief, before he became entirely engrossed by war and hunting, might have wrote down some favourite passage, composed or recited by a bard, or some old chief preserved on parchment a genealogy delivered by a sennachie.

Though the imagination may be delighted with fiction, when the pictures drawn by the flowing pencil of Fancy resemble something that we know, or believe to exist; yet the love of truth is happily so fixed in the human mind, that we revolt from a mixture of truth and falsehood, especially where the boundaries are undistinguished. The quick disgust we feel on a discovery of this kind, is apt to lead us into an opposite mistake; wherever we are required to believe more than what is probable, we generally end in believing less, or in entire scepticism. The alterations and embellishments that have been made on these ancient poems, have contributed more than any thing else to shake their credit. But let us examine the circumstances which have been chiefly insisted on by the unbelievers.

First, It is said to be impossible that a people so savage and barbarous as the ancient CELTÆ, should either entertain generous and tender sentiments, or possess expressive and emphatic language to delineate their feelings, and record their exploits. I believe it is generally allowed that the inhabitants of the North of Britain were a branch of the ancient CELTÆ, whom the very Romans, who called them barbarians, (in common with all others who were strangers to the arts conducive to luxury, and the worship of their deities) allowed to possess exalted notions of liberty, friendship, and generosity, and a sense of probity in their dealings with each other. The clearest way to ascertain the possibility of heroic sentiments being delivered in eloquent language by wandering savages, who subsist by hunting, is to trace the manners of people who still exist in a similar state of society. The banks of the Mohawk very lately did, and the borders of the Huron and Oneida lakes still do, afford an apt illustration: there, heroic friendship, exalted notions of probity and honour, the fondest filial and fraternal affection, and the most enthusiastic patriotism, prevail: there every chief is an orator, and every orator a poet; if language, enriched with glowing imagery, exalted by the noblest conceptions, and modulated into harmonious periods, can be called poetry. The morality of these people is not indeed of so mild and amiable a cast as that of the FINGALIANS. Revenge makes a part of their religion: the cruelties they commit are not to gratify their inclinations, but to pacify the manes, and honour the memory of their departed friends: when that is once performed, they are kind and indulgent in no common degree to those whom accident, or the chance of war, throws into their power.

There is another cause which might operate powerfully to produce a superior refinement of humanity among our ancestors: women among uncivilized wandering tribes are generally in an abject and degraded state, and condemned to the most servile employments. Among the CELTÆ this appears not to have been the case. Women possessed considerable influence in society; they were admitted at a certain age to councils, and held in reverence on account of a prophetic spirit with which some individuals were supposed to be endowed. This fact is unquestionably established; and whether their obtaining so high a rank in society was the cause or the consequence of a greater degree of mildness and humanity in their manners than is usually found among uncivilized people, the inference is equally just.

The next circumstance which has been urged against the authenticity of the poems is, that the language in which they are preserved could not have subsisted for many centuries unaltered. What has altered language but the invasion and conquest of countries, or the travels of the inhabitants, whom commercial or other pursuits have attracted to foreign countries, and who, returning, bring new customs and foreign languages to the place of their nativity? From the reverence with which people in a state of nature usually regard their ancestors, it is presumable that a man would always call a deer, a fox, a river, or a mountain, by the name his father called it. Things newly invented or imported would have new names, but that would not change the original form of the language. In a country equally poor and inaccessible, the usual causes of alteration did not occur. It was naturally impregnable, and not worth conquering. Strangers had no motive of curiosity or advantage to visit it; nothing but extreme necessity made the natives emigrate; and when they acquired the language and manners of a civilized country, they were equally unfit and unwilling to live in their own. It is obvious that the language has undergone no material alteration since the establishment of the monks of Icolmkill.

The next impossibility asserted is, that of preserving an unwritten composition, unimpaired, for so long a series of ages. People who have long worn spectacles can make little use of their eyes without them. We have so long accustomed ourselves to a certain medium, by which knowledge is preserved, and through which it is received, that it is not easy for us to comprehend how others could retain in their memories what ours are unequal to. We have such a number of new images continually passing through our minds, and effacing the old, that we are very inadequate judges of the deep impression which pathos and sublimity might make on a mind open to receive, and at leisure to fix their impressions. As little can we judge of the fidelity of retension, which might result from a man's making it the object of his life, like any other trade or profession, to retain and recite poems. Persons still living remember a woman in Strathspey, who, though never taught to read, could recite the whole book of Psalms in the Gaelic translation, merely by having it read to her by others. This to be sure was the employment and delight of all the leisure hours of a long life; but it is a proof what hold the memory takes, where the heart is deeply interested. Dr. JOHNSON, a name never to be mentioned but with respect and veneration, seems to have erred in his estimation of the faculties of the mind, when neither exalted by culture, nor debased by utter neglect. He imputed too much to learning, and did not think that a mind could be informed or enlarged by any other means. He does not appear to have considered that the book of Nature lay open to all, and that other books at best contain but the aggregate of human reflection and observation suggested by that great book. People who had abilities, made use of them to treasure up in their memories, for the delight and instruction of others, what had formerly delighted and instructed themselves. Their bequeathing their most valuable acquisitions unimpaired to others, was not at all improbable. The errors which crept into written legends, were often owing to their being copied over by those who merely performed a task in transcribing them, and felt no interest in the original: but in reciting, or rather chanting poems, where they were well known and highly relished, and where a certain rythmus or cadence was connected with them, which was broke in upon by the change of a syllable, no great departure from the original words could pass unnoticed, the ear in this case aiding the memory.

Supposing that such poems once did exist, it is not easy to believe they could be forgot or neglected by a people whose national vanity was so flattered by them; especially when we consider that every Chief retained a bard, whose principal business it was to recite those scriptures of chivalry, for such they were esteemed.

The simplicity of manners, ardent affections, heroic extravagance, and generous contempt of life, which these poems ascribe to our ancestors, correspond with the description left to us of the ancient BRITONS in the times of the DRUIDS. Their manners, indeed, strongly mark that period of society which the fables and traditions of various nations have decorated with enthusiastic embellishments, and peopled with heroes and demi‐gods;—the time when people were not bound by laws, but, from reverence to their ancestors, held sacred the precepts and customs bequeathed by them; when property was so far ascertained, that the courageous might retain what their exertions acquired, yet so unsettled, that the weak found it necessary to dwell under the shadow of the strong:—when the love of glory predominated over every other passion, because all power, all esteem, all veneration, centered in him, who, by uniting courage with generosity, made himself at once beloved and feared:—when the passion of love was a powerful one, because opposed by no other, and exalted by that of glory, every woman being ennobled by the heroes with whom she was allied:—where friendship was a strong because a beneficial bond; for who loves his friend so well as he who is daily bestowing or receiving assistance and protection? And, lastly, when poetry, the audible and harmonious language of nature, flowed pure from the heart, and was consecrated to its best affections, to reward the successful, or console the suffering hero; to preserve the remembrance of noble actions; to lament the tender lover or faithful friend; and to give the joy of grief to the soul, that is purified, while it is melted. Such is the age which may be called the golden one of heroism; of which every nation delights to preserve the traditions and obscure or exaggerated history; and which intervenes betwixt that of the selfish, solitary savage, whose short life is spent in sudden transitions from violent exertion to gloomy indolence; and that of the civilized inhabitant, who becomes as selfish from the multitude of his wants, as the other from the precariousness of his possessions; adjusting his morality to coercive laws, and regulating his desires by every changing fashion. This heroic age is necessarily an illiterate one, the knowledge of letters being always preceded by agriculture and com‐ merce. Civilization and regular polity succeed so soon to the heroic age, (which, after all, is a melancholy and precarious state of life) that it is very difficult to trace the fleeting images of the characters that adorn, or the events that diversify it. What, then, do we owe to the revered personage, at once a Poet, a Prince, and a Hero, who delineated in unfading colours a faithful picture of this short yet interesting interval; who sung the loves, the wars, the woes of his contemporary heroes, and arrayed them in such truth of character, and beauty of diction, as cannot fail to attract and delight through every age? The frequent recurrence of the same images and incidents may tire and disgust a taste refined to nicety; the style of the translator may perhaps at times be justly accused of swelling into tumidity; but wisdom and learning, after having long sat in council upon the nature of poetical excellence, and laid down rules innumerable for attaining it, have at length come to this conclusion, that as it is the province of poetry to delight the imagination and affect the heart, what pleases and affects very many, and continues to please and affect very long, must needs be poetry of no inferior kind, however obvious, or however numerous its blemishes; and daily observation evinces, that the most correct and faultless poetry, formed on the purest classical models, if it fails in these great pre‐requisites, if it can neither fix the attention or affect the heart, sinks into sudden oblivion.