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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
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine.

But cloud instead, and ever-during dark
Surrounds me! *

So much the rather thou, celestial Light!

Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate; there plant eyes; all mist from thence
Purge and disperse; that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.

Dr. Blacklock, also, in the following expressive lines, not only paints his own experience, but that of his entire class:

Wide o'er my prospect rueful darkness breathes

Her inauspicious vapor; in whose shade,

Fear, grief, and anguish, natives of her reign,

In social sadness gloomy vigils keep;

With them I walk, with them still doomed to share
Eternal blackness, without hope of dawn.

But among all the eminent poets of this order, there is none who has more strikingly portrayed the emotions native to a sense of blindness, than the venerable Ossian. In almost every poem in this entire collection, he laments over his sightlessness, in strains so touching, as are not only indicative of condition, but prove to us that the emotions awakened by this affliction have been the same in every age of the world and state of society. In the fourth book of Fingal, in a strain of sublimity that portrays the deep emotions of his soul, he thus sadly mourns over his deprivations: "Daughter of the land of snow, I was not so mournful and blind, I was not so dark and forlorn, when Ever-allin loved me!"

Again, in the same book of that poem, he thus ad

dresses Malvina: "But I am sad, forlorn, and blind: no more the companion of heroes! Give, lovely maid, to me thy tears."

In Carthon, he beautifully speaks of feeling and hearing, the two senses on which every blind person most depends. "I feel the sun, O Malvina! leave me to my rest. Perhaps they may come to my dreams. I think I hear a feeble voice! The beam of heaven delights to shine on the grave of Carthon. I feel it warm around." And again, in the fifth book of Fingal, lamenting the fall of that hero: “I hear not thy distant voice on Cona. My eyes per. ceive thee not. Often forlorn and dark, I sit at thy tomb, and feel it with my hands. When I think 1 hear thy voice, it is but the passing blast. Fingal has long since fallen asleep, the ruler of the war!" In the characters of Crothar, Lamor, and Barbarduthal, who are represented blind, Ossian so perfectly delineates the gestures and feelings consequent upon such a state, as could be done by no author to whom these were not prompted by experience. In Croma, the poet, speaking of his interview with Crothar, and that hero, referring to the shield presented to him by Fingal, thus speaks: "Dost thou not behold it on the wall for Crothar's eyes have failed. Is thy strength like thy father's, Ossian? let the aged feel thine arm! I gave my arm to the king; he felt it with his aged hands.”

These quotations, in connection with what has been said in the foregoing, we deem sufficient to substan

tiate the position we have taken relative to the authorship of the poems in question. But should any one argue that passages like these could be pilfered from the writings of the blind, and so patched into the compositions of another as not to discover theft, we can only say, he betrays such an ignorance of the true spirit of poetry, that we fear no opposition from this source. While heroic themes, robed in nature's own beauty and majesty, can interest the intelligent reader, the poems of "Blind Ossian" will be read with undiminished interest, and we cannot close this article without offering a few extracts, that may not only serve to throw light upon their author's history, but recommend this collection to all lovers of true poetry.

OSSIAN'S ADDRESS TO THE SUN.

O thou that rollest above, round as the shield of my fathers! Whence are thy beams, O Sun! thy everlasting light? Thou comest forth in thy awful beauty; the stars hide themselves in the sky; the moon, cold and pale, sinks in the western wave; but thou thyself movest alone. Who can be a companion of thy course? The oaks of the mountain fall; the mountains themselves decay with years; the ocean shrinks and grows again; the moon herself is lost in heaven but thou art forever the same, rejoicing in the brightness of thy course. When the world is dark with tempests, when thunder rolls and lightning flies, thou lookest in thy beauty from the clouds, and laughest at the storm. But to Ossian thou lookest in vain, for he beholds thy beams no more: whether thy yellow hair flows on the eastern clouds, or thou tremblest at the gates of the west.

:

But thou art, perhaps, like me, for a season; thy years will

have an end. Thou shalt sleep in thy clouds, careless of the voice of the morning. Exult then, O Sun, in the strength of thy youth! Age is dark and unlovely; it is like the glimmering light of the moon, when it shines through broken clouds, and the mist is on the hills: the blast of the north is on the plain, the traveler shrinks in the midst of his journey.

FROM THE POET'S LAST SONG.

Lead, son of Alpin, lead the aged to his woods. The winds begin o rise. The dark wave of the lake resounds. Bends there not a tree from Mora with its branches bare? It bends, son of Alpin, in the rustling blast. My harp hangs on a blasted branch; the sound of its strings is mournful. Does the wind touch thee, O harp, or is it some passing ghost? It is the hand of Malvina! Bring me the harp, son of Alpin. Another song shall rise. My soul shall depart in the sound. My fathers shall hear it in their airy hall. Their dim faces shall hang, with joy, from their clouds; and their hands receive their son. The aged oak bends over the stream. It sighs with all its moss. The withered fern whistles near, and mixes, as harp, and raise the song: Bear the mournful sound

it waves, with Ossian's hair. Strike the be near, with all your wings, ye winds.

away to Fingal's airy hall. Bear it to Fingal's hall, that he may hear the voice of his son: the voice of him that praised the mighty! The blast of the north opens thy gates, O king! I behold thee sitting on mist dimly gleaming in all thine arms. Thy form now is not the terror of the valiant. It is like a watery cloud, when we see the stars behind it with their weeping eyes. Thy shield is the aged moon: thy sword a vapor half kindled with fire. Dim and feeble is the chief who traveled in brightness before. But thy steps are on the winds of the desert. The storms are darkening in thý hand. Thou takest the sun in thy wrath, and hidest him in thy clouds. The sons of little men are afraid. A thousand showers descend. But when thou comest forth in thy mildness, the gale of the morning is near thy course. The sun laughs in his blue fields; the gray stream winds in its vale. The bushes shake their green heads in the wind. The roes bound towards the desert

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