Note 14 — CRUGAL’s GHOST, APPEARING TO CONNAL,—FROM OSSIAN.[14]

This, and the ensuing version, are not calculated for the admirers of Ossian. Those who have a true taste for him, in the simple grandeur of the translation in solemn prose, will think, with the author of this Miscellany, that the most sonorous rhyme and best constructed measure cannot improve his poetic charms. But there are people of genius, who have fervent taste for lyric excellence, that consider poetry, divested of measure, as bombastic prose. Influenced by that prejudice, they perceive neither grandeur nor beauty in the awful and striking imagery of the old Bard. The author of the above paraphrase, convinced that the songs of Ossian contain poetic matter, potent to elevate and render beautiful, any mode of composition, here tries the effect of that, in which Pope has given us a still more ancient Bard than Ossian. The passages very well bear being detached, and form in themselves a perfect whole. She thinks the ghosts of Crugal, and Cuchullin, vie in sublime and mournful grace with those of Patroclus and of Hector—with that of Margaret in the exquisite ballad, and almost with the Spirit, in the Book of Job, which passed before the eyes of Eliphaz, amid the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men.