ces, and tombs; their wives, musicians, and bards; their
tributes, and sufferings, and triumphs; their internecine and other
wars--are all fully and clearly described in the Ossianic cycle. They
still remain demanding adequate treatment, when we arrive at the age of
Conn [Note: See page 20.], Art, and Cormac, kings of Tara in the second
and third centuries of the Christian era. All have been forgotten for
the sake of a vague representation of the more sublime aspects of the
cycle, and the meretricious seductions of a form of composition easy to
write and easy to read, and to which the unwary or unwise often award
praise to which it has no claim.

On the other hand, chapter xi. purports only to be a representation of
the feelings excited by this literature, and for every assertion there
is authority in the cycle. Chapter xii., however, is a translation from
the original. Every idea which it contains, except one, has been taken
from different parts of the Ossianic poems, and all together expressthe
graver attitude of the mind of Ossian towards the new faith. That idea,
occurring in a separate paragraph in the middle of the page, though
prevalent as a sentiment throughout all the conversations of Ossian with
St. Patrick, has been, as it stands, taken from a meditation on life by
St. Columbanus, one of the early Irish Saints--a meditation which,
for subtle thought, for musical resigned sadness, tender brooding
reflection, and exquisite Latin, is one of the masterpieces of mediaeval
composition.

To the casual reader of the bardic literature the preservation of an
ordered historical sequence, amidst that riotous wealth of imaginative
energy, may appear an impossibility. Can we believe that forestine
luxuriance not to have overgrown all highways, that flood of
superabundant song not have submerged all landmarks? Be the cause what
it may, the fact remains that they did not. The landmarks of history
stand clear and fixed, each in its own place unremoved; and through that
forest-growth the highways of history run on beneath over-arching, not
interfering, boughs. The age of the predominance of Ulster does not
clash with the age of the predominance of Tara; the Temairian kings are
not mixed with the contemporary Fians. The chaos of the Nibelungen is
not found here, nor the confusion of the Scotch ballads blending all the
ages into one.

It is not imaginative strength that produces confusion, but imaginative
weakness. The strong