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Wordsworth's Unacknowleged Debt to Macpherson's Ossian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

John Robert Moore
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Extract

Although Wordsworth professed contempt for Macpherson's “translation” as a worthless forgery, it can be shown that he was familiar with the subject-matter, the spirit, and, in places, with the exact phraseology of Ossian; that he borrowed an Ossianic word or two when he needed it; that many of his poems deal with themes relating to the Ossianic poems, or present images or lines to which parallels may be found in Ossian; and that in his passionate love of the mountain wilderness he came very near the spirit of the blind bard of Selma.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , June 1925 , pp. 362 - 378
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1925

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References

1 Letters of the Wordsworth Family from 1787 to 1855, ed. Wm. Knight, Boston and London, 1907, I, 286. Letter dated January 20, 1807.

2 Ibid., III, 115.

3 Quoted by Wm Knight, The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Edinburgh, 1889, X, 311.

4 Letters of the Wordsworth Family, II, 209.

5 Ibid., II, 366. “Notwithstanding the censure, you will see proofs—both in page 238 and in page 15 of the third volume of the same edition—that I consider myself much indebted to Macpherson, as having made the English public acquainted with the traditions concerning Ossian and his age. Nor would I withhold from him the praise of having preserved many fragments of Gaelic poetry, which without his attention to the subject might perhaps have perished. Most of these, however, are more or less corrupted by the liberties he has taken in the mode of translating them.”

6 Less ungrateful was Bowles, who, in his Monody on the Death of Dr. Warton, listed Ossian as one of his six favorite authors during his Oxford days, together with Homer, Theocritus, Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Milton. However, it is apparent that Bowles esteemed Ossian as matter for “the unheeded midnight hours,” admiring it for its strangeness and remoteness from the life he knew, rather than, as I am convinced Wordsworth did, for its passionate expression of the beauty of environing nature.

The naive admiration of Robert Burns, who named Macpherson's Ossian among “the glorious models after which I endeavour to form my conduct,” is more amusing than significant.

7 David Watson Rannie, Wordsworth and His Circle, New York and London, 1907, pp. 8-9.

8 émile Legouis, The Early Life of William Wordsworth. 1770-1798, trans. by J. W. Matthews, London, 1897, pp. 122-23.

9 A History of Eighteenth Century Literature, London and New York, 1907, p. 336.

10 Hugh Blair, A Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian, in The Poems of Ossian, London, 1806, I, 110.

11 The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Edinburgh, 1883, IV, 350-53.

12 Supra, p. 364.

13 Op. cit., pp. 146-47.

14 Ibid., pp. 136-45. But Legouis makes no mention of Ossian in his list of parallel passages.

15 For a comprehensive survey of Wordsworth's literary background, see Dr. K. Lienemann's Die Belesenheit von William Wordsworth, Berlin, 1908.

16 Letters of the Wordsworth Family, I, 32.

17 Supra, p. 365.

18 R. W. Emerson, who was much struck by the prejudices of Wordsworth's “narrow and very English mind” (English Traits, Boston, 1884, p. 27), and who records Wordsworth's opinion that “no Scotchman can write English” (p. 279), gives a vivid account of the enthusiastic interest which the poet took in the composition of these sonnets (pp. 24-5).

“He had just returned from a visit to Staffa, and within three days had made three sonnets on Fingal's Cave and was composing a fourth when he was called in to see me. He said ‘If you are interested in my verses perhaps you will like to hear these lines.‘ I gladly assented, and he recollected himself for a few moments and then stood forth and repeated, one after the other, the entire three sonnets with great animation. I fancied the second and third more beautiful than his poems are wont to be….This recitation was so unlooked for and surprising,—he, the old Wordsworth, standing apart, and reciting to me in a garden-walk, like a school-boy declaiming,—that I at first was near to laugh; but recollecting myself, that I had come thus far to see a poet and he was chanting poems to me, I saw that he was right and I was wrong, and gladly gave myself up to hear.”

19 Oxford Edition, p. 925.

20 Ibid., p. 474, ll. 6-8.

21 The Poems of Ossian, Translated by James Macpherson, Centenary Edition, Edinburgh, 1896, p. 410.

22 Oxford Edition, p. 301, ll. 119-28.

23 Ibid., p. 390, ll. 29-35.

24 Ibid., p. 473, ll. 63-82.

25 Ibid., p. 695, ll. 567-72.

26 Supra, p. 367.

27 Oxford Edition, p. 389. ll. 1-2.

28 Centenary Edition, “The Songs of Selma,” Alpin, pp. 416-17.

29 Ibid., p. 415.

30 Ibid., p. 409.

31 Ibid., Berrathon, p. 396.

32 Ibid., Dar-Thula, p. 348.

33 Oxford Edition, p. 363, l. 110.

34 Ibid., p. 109, ll. 7-8.

35 Centenary Edition, Oithona, p. 135.

36 Oxford Edition, p. 109, ll. 5-6.

37 Centenary Edition, “The Songs of Selma,” p. 409.

38 Oxford Edition, p. 500, ll. 51-2.

39 Centenary Edition, Conlath and Cuthona, p. 370.

40 Oxford Edition, p. 187, l. 1.

41 Centenary Edition, Carthon, p. 174.

42 Ibid., Fingal, III, 63.

43 Ibid., Colna-Dona, p. 195.

44 Ibid., Sul-Malla of Lumon, p. 382.

45 Ibid., Cathlin of Clutha, p. 334.

46 Ibid., “The Songs of Selma,” Alpin, p. 413.

47 Ibid., The Battle of Lora, p. 150.

48 Oxford Edition, p. 259, l. 5.

49 Centenary Edition, Temora, II, p. 253.

50 Ibid., “The Songs of Selma,” Alpin, p. 413.

51 Oxford Edition, p. 187, ll. 7-8.

52 On the Study of Celtic Literature, etc., New York, 1907, p. 129.

53 Supra, p. 364.

54 Oxford Edition, p. 230, ll. 61-5.

55 Op. cit., p. 446.

56 Oxford Edition, p. 206, 11. 76-80.

57 Op. cit., p. 120.

58 Ibid., p. 116.

59 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, sub “James Macpherson.”

60 The Treatment of Nature in English Poetry, Chicago, 1909, p. 213.

61 Ibid., p. 214.

62 John Veitch, The Feeling for Nature in Scottish Poetry, Edinburgh and London, 1887, II, 117-18.

63 Landscape in History and Other Essays, London, 1905, pp. 115-17.

64 Aspects of Poetry, Oxford, 1881, p. 285.

65 On Poetic Interpretations of Nature, Boston, 1885, pp. 232-34.

66 Ibid., p. 248.

67 Cf. Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, London, 1897, II, 51: “old Ossian's old friends, sunbeams and mists.”

68 Oxford Edition, p. 588, ll. 25-8.

69 Centenary Edition, 410-11.