oared into
the falsetto,--but ignored its beauties, and was obstinately blind to
those passages where it rose into real sublimity or melted into
melodious pathos.

Macaulay has, in various of his papers, shewn a fine sympathy with
original genius. He has done so notably in his always able and always
generous estimate of Edmund Burke, and still more in what he says of
Shelley and of John Bunyan. It was his noble panegyric on the former
that first awakened the "late remorse of love" and admiration for that
abused and outraged Shade. And it was his article on Bunyan's Pilgrim's
Progress which gave it--popular as it had been among religionists--a
classical place in our literature, and that dared to compare the genius
of its author with that of Shakespere and of Milton. But he has failed
to do justice to Ossian, partly from some early prejudice at its author
and his country, and partly from want of a proper early Ossianic
training. To appreciate Ossian's poetry, the best way is to live for
years under the shadow of the Grampians, to wander through lonely moors,
amidst drenching mist and rain, to hold _trystes_ with thunderstorms on
the summit of savage hills, to bathe in sullen tarns after nightfall, to
lean over the ledge and dip one's naked feet in the spray of cataracts,
to plough a solitary path into the heart of forests, and to sleep and
dream for hours amidst the sunless glades, on twilight hills to meet the
apparition of the winter moon rising over snowy wastes, to descend by
her ghastly light precipices where the eagles are sleeping, and
returning home to be haunted by night visions of mightier mountains,
wider desolations, and giddier descents. A portion of this experience is
necessary to constitute a true "Child of the Mist"; and he that has had
most of it--and that was Christopher North--was best fitted to
appreciate the shadowy, solitary, and pensively sublime spirit which
tabernacles in Ossian's poetry. Of this Macaulay had little or nothing,
and, therefore, although no man knew the Highlands in their manners,
customs, and history better, he has utterly failed as a critic on
Highland Poetry.

We might add to the names of those authors who appreciated Ossian, Lord
Byron, who imitates him in his "Hours of Idleness"; and are forced to
include among his detractors, Lord Brougham, who, in his review of these
early efforts, says clumsily, that he won't criticise it lest he should
be attacking Macpherson himself, wit