legend. Both the
guiding motive of his prose-poem (it is his as truly as _King Lear_
is Shakespeare's), and the furore of welcome which greeted it, may be
understood by recalling the position of the sentimental school on the eve
of its appearance. The sentimentalists were maintaining that civilization
had corrupted tastes, morals, and poetry, that it had perverted Man from
his instinctive goodness, and that only by a return to communion with
Nature could humanity and poetry be redeemed. But all this was based
merely on philosophic theory, and could find no confirmation in history
or literature: history knew of no innocent savages; and even as
unsophisticated literature as Homer was then supposed to be, disclosed no
heroes perfect in the sentimental virtues.

_Ossian_ appeared; and the truth of sentimentalism seemed historically
established. For here was poetry of the loftiest tone, composed in the
unlearned Dark Ages, and answering the highest expectations concerning
poetry inspired by Nature only. (Was not a distinguished Professor of
Rhetoric saying, "Ossian's poetry, more perhaps than that of any other
writer, deserves to be styled the poetry of the heart"?) And here was
the record of a nature-people whose conduct stood revealed as flawless.
"Fingal," Macpherson himself accommodatingly pointed out, "exercised
every manly virtue in Caledonia while Heliogabalus disgraced human nature
in Rome." More than fifty years afterwards Byron compared Homer's Hector,
greatly to his disadvantage, with Ossian's Fingal: the latter's conduct
was, in his admirer's words, "uniformly illustrious and great, without
one mean or inhuman action to tarnish the splendor of his fame." The
benevolent magnanimity of the heroes, the sweet sensibility of the
heroines, their harmony with Nature's moods (traits which Macpherson had
supplied from his own imagination), were the very traits that won
the enthusiasm of the public. The poem in its turn stimulated the
sentimentalism which had produced it; and henceforth the new school
contended on even terms with the old.

One of the effects of the progress of sentimentalism was the decline of
satire. Peculiarly the weapon of the classical school, it had fallen into
unskillful hands: Churchill, though keen and bold, lacked the grace of
Pope and the power of Johnson. Goldsmith might have proved a worthier
successor; but though his genius for style was large, his capacity for
sustained indignation was limit