saw, too, that the historical origin of the ballads,
and the position in time and place of the heroes whom they praised, had
been lost in that colony removed since the time of St. Columba from its
old connection with the mother country. Thus released from the curb of
history, he gave free rein to the imagination, and in the conventional
literary language of sublimity, gave full expression to the feelings
that arose within him, as to him, pondering over those ballads, their
gigantesque element developed into a greatness and solemnity, and their
vagueness and indeterminateness into that misty immensity and weird
obscurity which, as constituent factors in a poem, not as back-ground,
form one of the elements of the false sublime. Either not seeing the
literary necessity of definiteness, or having no such abundant and
ordered literature as we possess, upon which to draw for details,
and being too conscientious to invent facts, however he might invent
language, he published his epics of Ossian--false indeed to the
original, but true to himself, and to the feelings excited by meditation
upon them. This done, he had not sufficient courage to publish also
the rude, homely, and often vulgar ballads--a step which, in that hard
critical age, would have been to expose himself and his country to swift
contempt. The thought of the great lexicographer riding rough-shod
over the poor mountain songs which he loved, and the fame which he had
already acquired, deterred and dissuaded him, if he had ever any such
intention, until the opportunity was past.

MacPherson feared English public opinion, and fearing lied. He declared
that to be a translation which was original work, thus relegating
himself for ever to a dubious renown, and depriving his country of
the honest fame of having preserved through centuries, by mere oral
transmission, a portion, at least, of the antique Irish literature. To
the magnanimity of his own heroes he could not attain:--

"Oscar, Oscar, who feared not armies--
Oscar, who never lied."

Of some such error as MacPherson's I have myself, with less excuse, been
guilty, in chapters xi. and xii., Vol. I., where I attempt to give
some conception of the character of the Ossianic cycle. The age and the
heroes around whom that cycle revolves have, in the history of Ireland,
a definite position in time; their battles, characters, several
achievements, relationships, and pedigrees; their Duns, and
trysting-pla