for a week, I found yours of
the 14th, which had surely loitered by the way. I thank you most cordially for
your present. I meet with little poetry nowadays that touches my heart; but
your translations excite mingled emotions of pity and terror, insomuch, that I
would not wish any person of weaker nerves to read William and Helen
before going to bed. Great must be the original if it equals the translation in
energy and pathos. One would almost suspect you have used as much liberty with
Bürger as Macpherson was suspected of doing with
Ossian. It is, however, easier to backspeir you. Sober reason rejects the machinery as
unnatural; it reminds me, however, of the magic of Shakspeare. Nothing has a finer effect than the repetition of
certain words, that are echoes to the sense, as much as the celebrated lines in
Homer about the rolling up and falling
down of the stone:—Tramp, tramp, splash, splash, is to
me perfectly new;—and much of the imagery is nature. I should consider this
same muse of yours (if you carry the intrigue far) more likely to steal your
heart from the law than even a wife. I am, Dear Sir, your most obedient, humble
servant,
James Macpherson (1736-1796)
Scottish poet who attributed his adaptations of Gaelic poetry to the blind bard Ossian;
author of the prose epics Fingal (1761) and Temora (1763).
Ossian (250 fl.)
Legendary blind bard of Gaelic story to whom James Macpherson attributed his poems Fingal and Temora.
John Ramsay of Ochtertyre (1736-1814)
Scottish antiquary and acquaintance of Robert Burns and Walter Scott.
