Note 423 — Chapter II · INDICATIONS OF A NEW ATTITUDE TOWARD NATURE IN THE POETRY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY (continued 2)

Dr. Blair has a significant comment on the truth in the poems of Ossian. “The introduction of foreign images betrays a poet copying not from nature, but from other writers. Hence so many lions and tigers, and eagles and serpents which we meet with in the similes of modern poets; as if these animals had acquired some right to a place in poetical comparisons for ever, because employed by ancient authors. They employed them with propriety, as objects generally known in their country; but they are absurdly used for illustration by us, who know them only at second-hand, or by description.”