A very dubious, if not wholly mythical, figure in Celtic literature, is the once hugely admired Ossian. Macpherson, a contemporary of Dr. Johnson, came into prominence at the time when the eighteenth century was growing weary of the “classicism” of the school of Pope, and was ready to be interested in the simple, frank, romantic world. Macpherson was a Scotsman, who pretended to have collected from manuscripts, and from the memory of Highlanders, sundry poems of a certain Ossian, a Gaelic poet of the third century. These he translated into pompous declamatory prose, attempting something like the style and imagery of the Hebraic scriptures, but overstraining both. They were received with immense enthusiasm in England, France, and Germany, and were Napoleon’s favourite odes. Unhappily the alleged originals will, for the most part, not bear the light of criticism. Johnson did not scruple to call Macpherson an impostor. That there was an Ossian is probable, but the few poems which can with tolerable safety be assigned to him belong to a much later date than Macpherson claimed. Nevertheless, though Macpherson’s Ossian may be as great an imposture as Chatterton’s _Rowley Poems_, he, no doubt, did gather from the Celtic fragments and the Celtic folklore a mass of imagery and fire of words, which came in most fitting time to lend some help in ridding the weary world of the stereotyped coldnesses of the followers of Pope. (_d_) HEBREW INFLUENCE For those who are not Hebrews, Hebrew literature means the Bible, and especially the old Testament of that Bible. It would be a vain pretence to attempt to show precisely how far the Bible has influenced the thought of English writers. It is not our province here to deal with morals and moral influence, however much we may recognize that, since out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh, our English literature could not have been the literature it is, if the moral disposition and attitude at the back of it had been other than they are. And these have been in the largest measure determined by the Old Testament of the Hebrews.