Julius Cæsar informs us, that this class of men comprised many of the first rank, possessing superior talents, highly respected in state, and was supported by public establishment. So thorough a knowledge of ancient historical poetry was requisite, before be ing initiated into this order, that, with many, a course of diligent study for a term of twenty years was required. In this way the Celtic bards transmitted, as a sacred charge, their poems through successive generations. Consequently, we not unfrequently hear them termed, in ancient verse, the sons of future times. Their persons were held so inviolable, that they were ever secure against personal outrage from foes. "He feared to stretch his sword to the bards, though his soul was dark." When this institution had attained to its meridian excellence, and the cap ital of Morven was enriched and embellished, to a degree of magnificence before unknown among the nations of north-western Europe, the voice and harp of Ossian woke their echoes in the halls of Selma, the first among a thousand bards. The heroic splendor and peculiar institutions of Ossian's age, formed a conjunction of circumstances highly favorable towards developing a poetic spirit. "Ossian himself," says Dr. Blair, "appears to have been endowed * Under an institution like this, it is not strange that the best poems produced and preserved of those times, were the compositions of blind bards. Their extraordinary concentrative and retentive powers, and natural fondness for poetic numbers, must have given them great superiority over their cotemporaries. by nature with an exquisite sensibility of heart; prone to that tender melancholy which is so often an attendant on great genius, and susceptible equally of strong and of soft emotion." His first adventure of age which we have any account, was his contest with the chiefs of Erin, for Ever-allin, the beautiful daughter of Branno, king of Ireland, in which he was triumphant, and Ever-allin became his wife, and mother of his only son, Oscar, who was treacherously assassinated by Cairbar, a chief of Erin, and his young spouse Melvina was left in Cona, to mourn the fall of her beloved hero. She became the solace of Ossian in his age and blindness, and it is to her that many of his most beautiful poems are addressed. At what or period of his life, or from what circumstances, Ossian lost his sight, we cannot definitely determine from his poems; but it must have been at a considerably advanced age, for he sings of expeditions and battles in which he fought, when in the full vigor and strength of manhood, in company with his son Oscar. That these poems were written, however, after he was blind, appears evident from the fact that he, in nearly all of them, adverts to and laments his sightless condition. Notwithstanding the almost universal applause and admiration which these compositions have received from all lovers of true poetry, and their translation into almost every refined language in the civilized world, as Ossianic, every reader in the least acquainted with their history, must be aware that their authorship has been a sub ject of long and earnest dispute since their first publication. The idea that poems of so pure a style, abounding in such exquisite tenderness and sublimity, should have been produced in an age so rude in every other respect, and transmitted by oral tradition without corruption, through a period of nearly fourteen hundred years, has shocked the credulity of many intelligent and well-disposed persons. This has been looked upon by many literary characters, especially those of England, as so far out of the ordinary course of things, that they have by some been attributed to McPherson, who, it is maintained, wrote and ascribed them to an ancient bard, to avoid the criticism and envy of his cotemporary writers. Much light had been thrown upon this subject, from time to time, by the numerous methods instituted for this purpose, until Dr. Blair, in his critical dissertation concerning the poems of Ossian, so thoroughly canvassed the subject, and by facts, deductions, and arguments, proved them to be the genuine poems of Ossian, that there is scarcely room left for a doubt: There yet remains, however, unemployed, one argument with which, had it been at the command of this clear-minded and profound writer, he would have dispelled all speculation on this subject, as flee the shadows of night before the morning sun. This argument is predicated upon the perfect delineations of feeling in which these poems abound, intuitive in the bosom of every blind person. No less than twenty times does the author refer to this de privation, in a manner so striking, that every blind person acquainted with his own thoughts and emo tions, cannot fail to recognize them as kindred to those awakened in his own breast. Were these the only proofs in favor of their being the poems of Ossian, his claim would be established firm as the pyramids of Egypt, defying all the armies of literary dabblers and cavilers that have ever questioned their authorship. We do not pretend to deny, that poems whose themes and imagery are drawn from the universal field of nature, to which every author has access, may sometimes be imitated, with considerable exactness; but these are the emotions and vibra tions of the soul's intensest struggles, and are as proof against forgery, as the voice of the earthquake. One of the writers of this article, having possessed the advantages of sight, until at a considerable mature age, he can fully appreciate the difficulty under which he labors to make himself understood on this point, by those who have never felt the peculiar emotions awakened by a sense of blindness. There are peculiarities in all the descriptive writings of the blind, so striking, especially when portraying their own condition, or that of others under similar circumstances, that we find no difficulty whatever in tracing their identity. But that these marks of recognition are not so ap parent to the seeing, is clearly manifest from the folowing remarks of Dr. Kitto, relative to Homer and his writings: "The fact that he was blind," says this celebrated author, "could not, we apprehend, be collected from his works; but we may accept without dispute the ancient and universal tradition of his being in that condition." With all due deference to the doctor's clear perception, we beg leave to affirm, that while the account of Demodocus remains in the Odyssey, and the description of the Cyclopean giant, (whose huge eye Ulysses put out,) in the ninth book of that poem, this master-work will be claimed by the blind, though every tradition of its author should sink into oblivion. These remarks are alike applicable to Milton, Dr. Blacklock, Rev. Dr. Lucas, and others. So numerous and striking are the pictures which these authors have drawn of their own peculiar privations, that they form true mirrors in which every blind person may behold reflected his own condition. In the third book of "Paradise Lost," and in the dramatic poem, "Samson Agonistes," their inimitable author has left such glaring images of blindness, as must forever betray the privation under which they were conceived, though all incidents of his life were erased from the pages of history. How forcibly and pathetic do the following senti ments address themselves to our own hearts: Thus with the year Seasons return; but not to me returns |