he Opposition Benches
at one or two in the morning, and mentions this as a defect in the book.
The same objection applies to many parts of his own history. His
sweeping character of Macpherson is precisely such a hot hand-grenade as
he might in an excited mood have hurled in Parliament against some
Celtic M.P. from Aberdeen or Thurso whose zeal had outrun his
discretion.

Macaulay, it will be noticed, admits that Ossian's Poems were admired by
men of taste and of genius. But it never seems to have occurred to him
that this fact should have made him pause and reconsider his opinions
ere he expressed them in such a broad and trenchant style. Hugh Miller
speaks of a critic of the day from whose verdicts when he found himself
to differ, he immediately began to re-examine the grounds of his own.
This is a very high compliment to a single writer; but Macaulay on the
Ossian question has a multitude of the first intellects of modern times
against him. The author of the History of England is a great name, but
not so great as Napoleon the First, Goethe, and Sir Walter Scott, nor is
he greater than Professor Wilson and William Hazlitt; and yet all these
great spirits were more or less devoted admirers of the blind Bard of
Morven. Napoleon carried Ossian in his travelling carriage; he had it
with him at Lodi and Marengo, and the style of his bulletins--full of
faults, but full too of martial and poetic fire--is coloured more by
Ossian than by Corneille or Voltaire. Goethe makes Homer and Ossian the
two companions of Werter's solitude, and represents him as saying, "You
should see how foolish I look in company when her name is mentioned,
particularly when I am asked plainly how I like her. How I like her! I
detest the phrase. What sort of creature must he be who merely liked
Charlotte; whose whole heart and senses were not entirely absorbed by
her. Like her! Some one lately asked me how I liked Ossian." This it may
be said is the language of a young lover, but all men are at one time
young lovers, and it is high praise and no more than the truth to say
that all young lovers love, or did love, Ossian's Poems. _This is true
fame._ Sir Walter Scott says that Macpherson's rare powers were an
honour to his country; and in his Legend of Montrose and Highland Widow,
his own style is deeply dyed by the Ossianic element, and sounds here
like the proud soft voice of the full-bloomed mountain heather in the
breeze, and there like that of the e