ity.
Such is the bardic history of Ireland, but with this literary defect. A
perfect epic is only possible when the critical spirit begins to be
in the ascendant, for with the critical spirit comes that distrust and
apathy towards the spontaneous literature of early times, which permit
some great poet so to shape and alter the old materials as to construct
a harmonious and internally consistent tale, observing throughout a
sense of proportion and a due relation of the parts. Such a clipping
and alteration of the authorities would have seemed sacrilege to earlier
bards. In mediaeval Ireland there was, indeed, a subtle spirit of
criticism; but under its influence, being as it was of scholastic
origin, no great singing men appeared, re-fashioning the old rude epics;
and yet, the very shortcomings of the Irish tales, from a literary point
of view, increase their importance from a historical. Of poetry, as
distinguised from metrical composition, these ancient bards knew little.
The bardic literature, profoundly poetic though it be, in the eyes of
our ancestors was history, and never was anything else. As history it
was originally composed, and as history bound in the chains of metre,
that it might not be lost or dissipated passing through the minds
of men, and as history it was translated into prose and committed
to parchment. Accordingly, no tale is without its defects as poetry,
possessing therefore necessarily, a corresponding value as history.
But that there was in the country, in very early times, a high and rare
poetic culture of the lyric kind, native in its character, ethnic in
origin, unaffected by scholastic culture which, as we know, took a
different direction; that one exquisite poem, in which the father
of Ossian praises the beauty of the springtime in anapaestic [Note:
Cettemain | cain ree! | ro sair | an cuct | "He, Fionn MacCool, learned
the three compositions which distinguish the poets, the TEINM LAEGHA,
the IMUS OF OSNA, and the DICEDUE DICCENAIB, and it was then Fionn
composed this poem to prove his poetry." In which of these three forms
of metre the Ode to the spring-time is written I know not. Its form
throughout is distinctly anapaestic.--S. O'G.] verse, would, even though
it stood alone, both by the fact of its composition and the fact of its
preservation, fully prove.

Much and careful study, indeed, it requires, if we would compel these
ancient epics to yield up their greatness or their beauty, or e