The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January
1876, by Various

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Title: The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876
A Monthly Periodical Devoted to the Literature, History,
Antiquities, Folk Lore, Traditions, and the Social and
Material Interests of the Celt at Home and Abroad

Author: Various

Editor: Alexander Mackenzie
Alexander Macgregor
Alexander Macbain

Release Date: September 12, 2009 [EBook #29969]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE CELTIC MAGAZINE.

No. III. JANUARY 1876.

THE STATE OF THE OSSIANIC CONTROVERSY.

[CONTINUED.]

MR ARNOLD in that handsome, but slightly ambiguous admission of his,
that the Celts in their intellectual capacity come very near the secret
of nature and of natural magic, does not seem to imply more in reality
than that they have a subtler sense of certain natural affinities than
their Anglo-Saxon brethren have; that they apprehend more surely when,
where, and how the truest impress of physical nature occurs on the
percipient faculties of the soul, than men of a more phlegmatic
constitution do; and that they can draw from such intuitions of their
own a sort of inspiration, or second-sight of nature, comparable to
prophecy, which gives their highest poetic utterance a rapt
enthusiasm--and the accuracy of this estimate need not be disputed, but,
so far as Ossian is concerned, it must be considerably extended. To read
Ossian as we do, from the text of Macpherson, there was another sort of
insight, purely scientific, into the mysteries of nature, inherited and
expressed by him; a certain acquaintance with her hidden powers, and a
certain augury of her possible future development, if men could only
attain to it, far beyond the mere rapt enthusiasm of a poet, or the
so-called second-sight of a seer. Whether this peculiar faith of his