Chapter III — Ossian’s Influence Upon Klopstock and the So–called B… — Ossian in Germany by Rudolf Tombo

Chapter III Ossian’s Influence Upon Klopstock and the So–called Bards

§1. Klopstock

“Klopstock verliert alles, wenn man ihn in der Nähe und im Einzelnen betrachtet. Man muss ihn in einer gewissen Ferne und im Ganzen erfassen. Wenn man ihn liest, scheint er pedantisch und langweilig; wenn man ihn aber gelesen hat, und sich wieder an ihn erinnert, wird er gross und majestätisch. Dann glauben wir einen riesenhaften Geist Ossians zu sehen.”

—W. Menzel.

The subject of Ossian’s influence upon Klopstock, were it to receive exhaustive treatment, would greatly exceed the space we can allot to it in a general discussion of the effect that Ossian produced in Germany, and we shall therefore confine ourselves here largely to generalities and attempt only a broad sketch of Klopstock’s attitude toward the Gaelic bard. If we are to accept literally the statement made by Klopstock in a letter to Gerstenberg,48 to the effect that he did not adopt the mythology of his forefathers until after the appearance of the “Lied eines Skalden” (1766), we ought to begin our discussion with Gerstenberg. It appears, however, that Klopstock gave some attention to old Germanic history and mythology previous to 1766.49 At any rate, he fell under Ossian’s influence two years before, and set the example to a number of others. It is doubtful whether Ossian of himself would have had as strong an influence upon the so–called bards, had not Klopstock given the necessary encouragement; Gerstenberg’s example alone could not have been expected to produce the same results as that of the author of the Messiah.50 Indeed, the influences that Ossian and Klopstock exercised upon the bards are in many cases so closely interwoven, that a discussion of Ossian’s influence upon the bards without a previous study of Klopstock would be impracticable.

Two streams of poesy, proceeding from Hagedorn and Haller, respectively, ran side by side in the middle of the 18th century, the former bearing upon its surface the light, fantastic, Frenchified, anacreontic poetry, the latter the more somber verse of Klopstock and his pupils—this latter in the strain of Young’s Night Thoughts.51 The melancholy Ossian could be assured a cordial reception by a poet like Klopstock, at the bottom of whose really healthy nature there lurked something that had a little earlier responded to the elegiac mood of Young—feelings that had been intensified by the death of his dearly–beloved wife Meta (1758). This bereavement cast a deep shadow over Klopstock, so much so that for several years he wrote little poetry. Much of this time was spent in Germany—he had been living at Copenhagen since 1753—and it was undoubtedly upon one of these visits to his fatherland that he became acquainted with Ossian. Here was sustenance, indeed, for the sentimental side of his nature, for his Gefühlsschwärmerei. The dim forms of Ossian’s heroes, the misty atmosphere of the Highlands in which they lived, were well calculated to cast a spell over the author of the Messiah, whose own genius was not fitted to delineate his characters with sharp, clear–cut lines. There is a certain mistiness in Klopstock’s great epic that reminds one of the shadowy atmosphere in which the heroes of the Ossianic epics are enveloped. More than one passage in the Messiah conveys the impression of representing little more than rhetorical bombast. Macpherson was a kindred spirit.

This was, however, by no means all that Ossian held out to him. He saw something in Ossian that he seized upon even more eagerly—too eagerly, in fact—namely, he regarded Ossian as a German. By this time Klopstock’s activity in the patriotic field had begun; religion no longer engrossed his entire attention. Barring Frederick the Great, there were no glorious figures upon the political stage, and Frederick’s fondness for the literature of France was not calculated to attract Klopstock, who hated the rationalistic poetry of the French. Nor was the empire of the 18th century a political organism to inspire the poet to patriotic effusions. A united fatherland lay, however, in the dim and distant past, almost buried in oblivion, in the days of old, when Arminius and his mighty warriors defied the power of Rome itself. And thither Klopstock turned for inspiration. Tacitus was a good source for historical data and in the famous work of the old Roman historian mention was made of the shouting of a battle–song by the Germani, a baritus (written barditus in some of the manuscripts).52 Hence the term “bard” was applied to those whose duty it was to incite the warriors to battle by means of songs, and the songs themselves were called by Klopstock Bardiete, a word he applied also to his last historical dramas.53 Unfortunately these songs of the days of yore, for the existence of which Eginhard’s statement was cited as authority, were apparently lost:

Doch ach, verstummt in ewiger Nacht
Ist Bardiet und Skofliod, und verhallt
Euer Schall, Telyn, Triomb! Hochgesang,
Deinem sogar klagen wir nach.54

And now Ossian appeared upon the scene, the bard of bards, who sang of the deeds of days gone by. Here was a source of consolation, indeed. If Ossian had only sung the deeds of Arminius! Although Fingal was no hero to be despised, Klopstock laments:

Und in öden dunkeln Trümmern
Der alten Celtensprache,
Seufzen nur einige seiner leisen Laute.55

And this regret that only a few notes have been handed down he could not shake off. We meet with it again and again, not only in his odes, e. g., “Unsre Sprache,” but also in his letters, e. g., in an epistle to Denis, dated Copenhagen, Jan. 6, 1767, where he says: “Ich bitte Sie, mich nicht lange auf Ihre Uebersetzung des Ossian warten zu lassen. Ossian ist ein vortrefflicher Barde. Wenn wir doch auch von unsern Barden irgend in einem Kloster etwas fänden!”56 And in another letter to the same, dated Bernstorff, Sept. 8, 1767, he writes: “Ossians Werke sind wahre Meisterstücke. Wenn wir einen solchen Barden fänden! Es wird mir ganz warm bey diesem Wunsche.”57 And when Denis informs him of the discovery of the songs of the so–called Illyrian bards,58 he can not conceal his delight, and writes from Bernstorff under date of July 22, 1768: “Sie haben mir durch Ihre Nachricht, dass noch illyrische Barden durch die Ueberlieferung existiren, eine solche Freude gemacht, dass ich ordentlich gewünscht hätte, dass mir Ihr Ossian weniger gefallen hätte, um Sie bitten zu können, ihn liegen zu lassen und diese Barden zu übersetzen.”59 Though the Poems of Ossian could not, then, fully compensate for the German treasures that were lost, they offered a standard by which to judge the character of the songs of the old Germani, and threw light upon many old institutions. There was much false material in Macpherson’s various preliminary dissertations, which, unfortunately, was accepted as gospel truth, even by men who might have been credited with more critical acumen. And so when Klopstock was in search of dress and historical material for his Bardiete, what more natural than that in painting the character and customs of the followers of Arminius, he should borrow here and there from the picture of the ancient Celts as presented by Macpherson?60 That Klopstock interested himself in the history and manners of the ancient Caledonians, we see from a passage in the letter to Denis, dated July 22, 1768, where he refers Denis to John Macpherson’s Critical Dissertations:61 “Ich vermuthe, dass Sie einige Kleinigkeiten in Ihrer [Vorrede] zum Ossian ändern werden,” he writes, “wenn Sie Macpherson von den Alterthümern der Hochländer gelesen haben werden.”62

But what had Ossian to do with the old Germani? We shall let Klopstock answer in his own words: “Und nun eine kleine nicht üble Nachricht von meinen weidmännischen Lustwandlungen in den Wäldern unsrer alten Sprachen, nach gethaner Arbeit nämlich.—Makpherson, der Retter des Barden Ossian (Ossian war deutscher Abkunft, weil er ein Kaledonier war)63 wird mir, und wie ich hoffe nun bald, die eisgrauen Melodien zu einigen lyrischen Stellen des grossen Dichters schicken. Mit Hülfe dieser Melodien denk’ ich das Sylbenmaass der Barden herauszubringen.”64 An epigram in the same tone appeared in the Hamburgische Neue Zeitung, 1771, No. 183, and was reprinted in the first edition of the Gelehrtenrepublik, although omitted in the second. It was entitled “Gerechter Anspruch,” and ran as follows:

Sie, deren Enkel jetzt auf Schottlands Bergen wohnen,
Die von den Römern nicht provinzten Kaledonen,
Sind deutschen Stamms. Daher gehört auch uns mit an
Der Bard und Krieger Ossian,
Und mehr noch als den Engelländern an.

We see, therefore, that Ossian was unceremoniously annexed by Klopstock; Celts and Germani were all one to him,65 he drew no narrow distinctions, and not until late in life were his ideas on this point clarified. We are not to suppose, however, that Klopstock alone occupied this position. Far from it. The conceptions that existed at the time as to the genetic relation of peoples and languages were rather hazy, to say the least. Klopstock’s intense patriotism was a factor in preventing him from penetrating more to the root of the matter. “Die allgemein anerkannte und empfundene Vortrefflichkeit dieser Gesänge war es,” says a writer in the periodical Bragur,66 “welche... die zärtliche Vaterlandsliebe einiger teutschen Worthies so weit entflammte, dass sie nicht nur den Barden Ossian, weil man bisher die Celten für die Stammväter der Teutschen hielt und die ältesten teutschen Dichter aus der Heidenzeit nicht anders als mit dem Bardennamen zu beschenken gewohnt war, zu einem Landsmanne von uns zu machen suchten, sondern ihn auch wirklich machten. Unsere Väter waren also Celten, unsere ältesten teutonischen Dichter Barden.”

But still another element of confusion made its appearance with the introduction of Norse mythology. The warriors of Arminius were not Christians, nor was their religion based upon the mythology of the Greeks. They had a mythology of their own, of which little was known. Fortunately, the Old Norse Edda had preserved a complete system of divinities, and so Arminius and his followers were constrained to pray to the Old Norse gods. Ferven patriots, who did not hesitate to adopt Ossian as a countryman, could scarcely be expected to distinguish between Old Norse mythology and the mythology of the ancient Cherusci and Catti. Now Ossian having once been stamped as of German descent, it required no great stretch of imagination to make Fingal and his warriors forswear their allegiance to the Spirit of Loda and pray to Wodan and his band, and vice versa to make Norse bards—skalds—assume various characteristics of Ossian’s heroes. Ossian and the characters of Norse mythology went hand in hand, and making their appearance, as they did, about the same time,67 confusion was bound to arise. This confusion was particularly noticeable in the writings of the first group of German poets that were influenced by Ossian—of Klopstock and the bards—and played much mischief in German literature for several years. Klopstock, not content with introducing the Norse gods into his new poems, proceeded to drive the residents of Olympus out of old ones and to replace them by the dwellers in Walhalla. By the end of the year 1767 this process was completed. It is nowhere better illustrated than in the ode now called “Wingolf,” which was written in 1747 under the title “An des Dichters Freunde.” In the first verse, e. g., Hebe has had to make way for Gna and so on throughout the poem.68 It will be interesting to mention a few of the changes occasioned by the appearance of Ossian. L. 4: “Feyernd in mächtigen Dithyramben,” now reads: “Feyrend in kühnerem Bardenliede.” Ll. 5–7 which originally read:

Wilst du zu Strophen werden, o Lied, oder
Ununterwürfig Pindars Gesängen gleich,
Gleich Zevs erhabenen trunkenen Sohne,...69

have been changed to:

Willst du zu Strophen werden, O Haingesang?
Willst du gesetzlos, Ossians Schwunge gleich,
Gleich Ullers Tanz auf Meerkrystalle,...

It is evident that these changes are confined to externals, as is also the case when l. 10, “Mit Orpheus Leyer,” becomes “Des Zelten Leyer,” or l. 25, “Dein Priester wartet,” is changed to “Dein Barde wartet,” and so on. As for Orpheus, the Thracians were regarded by Klopstock as a tribe of the Celts, and so Orpheus becomes as much of a German bard as Ossian.70 Before we leave this ode, let us glance at an example or two, showing how the machinery of Ossian is thrown together with Norse mythology. Ll. 45–9, which originally read:

Aber geliebter, trunken und weisheitsvoll
Von Weingebürgen, wo die Unsterblichen
Taumelnd herumgehn, wo die Menschen
Unter Unsterblichen Götter werden.

were changed to:

Allein geliebter, wenn du voll Vaterlands
Aus jenen Hainen kömst, wo der Barden Chor 71
Mit Braga singet, wo die Telyn
Tönt zu dem Fluge des deutschen Liedes.

or ll. 209–12:

Oder, wie aus den Götterversammlungen
Mit Agyieus Leyerton, himmelab,
Und taumelnd, hin auf Weingebürgen,
Sazungenlos Dithyramben donnern!

which have become:

Wie aus der hohen Drüden Versammlungen,
Nach Braga’s Telyn, nieder vom Opferfels,
Ins lange tiefe Thal der Waldschlacht,
Satzungenlos sich der Barden Lied stürzt!

Klopstock notes with reference to the word Telyn: “Die Leyer der Barden. Sie heisset noch jetzt in der neueren celtischen Sprache so, die am Meisten von der älteren behalten hat.” The term has replaced Leier also in the odes “Thuiskon,” l. 13, “Die Barden,” l. 2; it occurs in ll. 62 and 123 of the ode “Der Hügel, und der Hain,” l. 14 of “Die Barden,” in the Hermannsschlacht, in Hermann und die Fürsten, etc. The introduction of this Celtic word goes back directly to the study of Celtic to which Klopstock was incited by the poems of Ossian. Moreover, it is not the only word he borrowed in this way. In “Die Barden,” l. 14, he speaks of the Telyn of our Filea, and explains the latter term in a note as “Die vortrefflichsten unter den Barden, welche die jüngeren unterrichteten.”72 Another Celtic word that he introduced is Bardale, which he defines as follows: “Von Barde. So hiess in unsrer älteren Sprache die Lerche. Die Nachtigall verdient’s noch mehr, so zu heissen.” Klopstock applied the word also to the nightingale, but in the ode “Die Lerche und die Nachtigall” he uses it for the lark, a symbol of the song of nature, in contradistinction to the nightingale, whose song is more artificial. The ode “Bardale,” written in 1748, was originally entitled “Aëdone”; it was first published under the simple title “Ode” in the Vermischte Schriften von den Verfassern der Bremischen Beiträge, i, p. 378 (1749). Although these terms are employed occasionally by Klopstock’s imitators and others,73 they never became popular and soon died out altogether.

Klopstock was an earnest student of versification and nothing could have given him more pleasure at one time of his career than the discovery of the poetical measures of the ancient Germani. The appearance of Macpherson’s Ossian in a prose garb, welcome as it was to some, must have come as a cruel disappointment to one who was so anxious to be enlightened as to the nature and structure of the meter of the Ur–Germanic bardic songs. This disappointment finds expression in the ode “Der Bach,” where he sings:

Der grosse Sänger Ossian folgt
Der Musik des vollen Baches nicht stets.

If Klopstock had only lived to see Ahlwardt’s translation from the so–called Celtic originals, he would have had at least a partial recompense. As it was, all he had to go by was the original (?) of the sixth book of “Temora” and that did not give him much information as to the exact structure of the verse he sought. He therefore entered into correspondence with Macpherson, as we saw above 74 in the letter to Gleim. The intensity of his interest is well illustrated by a few epistolary passages. He writes to Denis under date of July 22, 1768: “In dem Celtischen war ich auch schon ziemlich weit, aber es erklärt uns nichts; und da liess ichs. Ihnen ins Ohr. Macpherson (mit dem ich correspondire), versteht entweder Ossians Quantität, oder das Sylbenmass überhaupt nicht genug. Wenn Sie mir wahrscheinlich machen können, dass die illyrischen Barden wenigstens halbe Deutsche waren, so bekömmt der Uebersetzer einen schweren Stand mit mir, wenn er falsch, nur ein wenig falsch übersetzt.”75 Again, he writes to Ebert on May 5, 1769: “Wenn mir Macpherson Wort hält; so bekomme ich einige alte Melodien nach Ossian, in unsre Noten gesezt; und so kann ich auch vielleicht etwas nicht unwahrscheinliches von dem Rhythmus der Barden sagen.”76 It appears, however, that he got but little help from the material that Macpherson sent him, and so he takes his request to Angelica Kauffmann,77 who resided in London at the time. He writes to Gleim from Bernstorff, Sept. 2, 1769: “Ich bin seit Kurzem in eine deutsche Malerin in London, Angelika Kaufmann, beinahe verliebt. Sie hat einen Briefwechsel mit mir angefangen, und will mir schicken: einen Kopf Ossians nach ihrer Phantasie, ihr Portrait und ein Gemälde aus dem Messias.”78 Their common admiration for Ossian was no small factor in cementing the friendship between the poet and the artist. Unfortunately nothing came of the portrait of Ossian,79 and hence we are left in the dark as to the artist’s conception of the Voice of Cona and as to how her conception would have coincided with Klopstock’s. On March 3, 1770, Klopstock wrote to Angelica from Copenhagen: “Könnten Sie nicht in Edingburgh, oder auch weiter hinauf gegen Norden, durch Hülfe Ihrer Freunde, einen Musikus auftreiben, der mir die Melodien solcher Stellen im Ossian, die vorzüglich lyrisch sind, in unsere Noten setzte,” etc.80 Nothing could better illustrate Klopstock’s profound interest in the subject than the passages just quoted. After this we hear nothing further of the matter, and must conclude that Klopstock’s hoped–for assistance from this quarter proved illusory. What were Klopstock’s conclusions with reference to Ossian’s meter, we are told in one of his essays on the German hexameter, viz., he thought that Ossian’s meter consisted of a mixture of narrative verses of his own invention and other lyrical verses answering to the sense.81 Of course Ossian’s value for Klopstock lay in the fact that he supposedly sang in natural melodies and was not hampered by artificial measures.

At the height of his enthusiasm for Ossian, Klopstock deemed it no sacrilege to place the Celtic bard alongside of Homer, in accordance with the popular practice of the day.82 In a letter to Denis, Klopstock writes from Copenhagen under date of August 4, 1767: “Ich liebe Ossian so sehr, dass ich seine Werke über einige Griechische der besten Zeit setze.”83 In the first edition of the Gelehrtenrepublik (1774) appeared the following epigram, which is a striking illustration of Klopstock’s quondam supreme admiration for Ossian:

Du gingst der Schönheit Bahn,
Sohn Fingals, Ossian;
Sie ging Mäonides Homer:
Wer that der Schritte mehr?84

Similarly he sings in the ode “Unsre Sprache” (ll. 53–60):

Die Vergessenheit umhüllt’, o Ossian, auch dich!
Dich huben sie hervor, und du stehest nun da!
Gleichest dich dem Griechen! trotzest ihm!
Und fragst, ob wie du er entflamme den Gesang?

Voll Gedanken auf der Stirne höret’ ihn Apoll,
Und sprach nicht! und gelehnt auf die Harfe Walhalls
Stellt sich vor Apollo Bragor hin,
Und lächelt, und schweiget, und zürnet nicht auf ihn.

The first four verses of this eulogy became very popular among Ossian’s numerous admirers, and we find them occasionally prefixed to German translations. They are also quoted by Denis in his Vorbericht 85 to the Lieder Sineds (1772).

Let us now briefly consider Ossian’s influence upon Klopstock as it appears in some of his works. Dr. Julius Köster in his Programm Ueber Klopstocks Gleichnisse (Iserlohn, 1878), fixes the beginning of this influence altogether too late. He says: “Ossian hat erst Ende der sechziger Jahre auf Klopstock wirken können, weil er in Deutschland erst um jene Zeit durch die Uebersetzung von Denis bekannt wurde.” We have seen, however, that notices of Ossian had appeared in Germany as early as 1762 and that several translations were published before that of Denis, although to be sure, Denis’s was the first that attracted widespread attention. Klopstock, who of course had become acquainted with Ossian long before the appearance of Denis’s translation, took a warm interest in the translator’s work, as is evidenced by the correspondence that passed between the two. Klopstock had seen bits of the translation before it was published; under date of Sept. 8, 1767, he writes to Denis from Bernstorff: “Sie werden am Ende dieses Briefs einige Ausdrücke finden, mit denen ich in Ihrer Uebersetzung des Ossian und in Ihrer Ode weniger als mit den andern zufrieden bin.”86 It has been pointed out,87 that the earliest translations all emanated from North Germany, from Bremen, Hamburg, and Hannover, and they were consequently very liable to fall into Klopstock’s hands. Besides, there is no reason why he should not have read Macpherson’s poems in English, a copy of which he would have had no difficulty in procuring on one of the frequent visits made to Germany between the summer of 1762 and July, 1764. Klopstock had begun the study of English as a youngster at school, and although he, like so many other German literati of the day, like Lenz, for example, never obtained a complete scientific mastery of the language, he would have experienced little difficulty in construing Macpherson’s short, simple periods. Be that as it may, there can be no doubt of the fact that Klopstock became acquainted with Ossian as early as 1764, for the simple reason that some of the odes written in that year show plain traces of Ossian’s influence.

In all attempts to arrive at an exact estimate of Ossian’s influence upon Klopstock, one difficulty will always be encountered, a difficulty based upon the fact that both the language of Macpherson and that of Klopstock rest in large measure upon the same foundations: the Bible, Homer, Milton, Latin poets. Malcolm Laing in his “Dissertation”88 gave innumerable examples of Macpherson’s borrowings, and although he undoubtedly went a little too far, it can not be denied that many of his conclusions are true. The greatest care has, therefore, to be exercised in attributing anything in Klopstock to Ossian, for the chances are that the Bible, or Milton, or Homer, or Horace, or some other classical poet, is the common source from which both drew.89 For instance, Macpherson is fond of comparing the voice or song to a stream, but were we to attribute Klopstock’s lines:

So floss der Waldstrom hin nach dem Ozean:
So fliesst mein Lied auch, stark und gedankenvoll.

to Ossian, we should be led astray, for Klopstock’s source was undoubtedly Horace, Odes, iv, 2, ll. 5–8, where he speaks of the songs of Pindar:

Monte decurrens velut amnis, imbres
Quem super notas aluere ripas,
Fervet immensusque suit profundo
Pindarus ore.

The large majority of Klopstock’s comparisons are taken from nature and so are Ossian’s: comparisons with the moon and the stars, dusk and night, clouds and mist, wind and storm, etc., etc., all are found in Klopstock even before Ossian appeared; indeed, the resemblance of the language of Klopstock to that of Ossian, even in the early songs of the Messiah, especially as far as the imagery is concerned, is striking. The same accumulation of comparisons is of course found in Homer. Köster 90 again and again notes passages from Ossian where an influence proceeding from him is absolutely out of the question, not only in connection with the early songs of the Messiah, but also with reference to odes written before 1764, e. g., he refers to Ossian in connection with the line “Laura war... Schön wie ein festlicher Tag,” in the ode “Petrarka und Laura” (l. 61). But this ode was written as early as 1748 and consequently Ossian can not be held responsible. When Klopstock in the “Klagode” sings (ll. 10–11):

Wie Gras auf dem Felde sind Menschen
Dahin, wie Blätter;...

we can of course point to a resemblance in Ossian, “Lathmon,” p. 271, l. 20: “We decay like the grass of the hill,” or “Berrathon,” p. 382, l. 3: “Like the leaves of woody Morven, they pass away,” but at the same time we must not forget that similar comparisons occur in the Psalms and in Homer (e. g., Iliad, vi, ll. 146–8). Likewise we have the comparison of man’s perishableness to the short life of a flower in Hermann und die Fürsten, Sc. 14: “Vor dem Triumphwagen werd’ ich wie eine Blume hindorren,” and also in Ossian, “Croma,” p. 178, l. 18: “They fall away, like the flower,” etc., but compare Job, 14, 2, Psalms, 103, 15–6, etc. Enough examples have been cited to convince one of the fruitlessness of attempting to draw sharp lines in the treatment of our subject. Of this we may be certain: One reason why Ossian appealed so strongly to Klopstock was, that he found here so much that was familiar to him from his own reading and writing.

Having thus far regarded the question mainly from a negative standpoint, it now remains for us to give some examples of a positive influence. Ossian’s influence upon Klopstock is visible particularly in the odes written in 1764, 1766 and 1767, and in the first Bardiet, Die Hermannsschlacht, although traces appear in the later odes and Bardiete. Doubtless a closer examination of the language of the later books of the Messiah would also reveal the influence of Ossian. Salomo contains an Ossianic reminiscence or two, but nothing that can be distinctly localized. Klopstock’s unbounded admiration for Ossian really did not last much over a decade and the old bard’s influence gradually diminished, just as Klopstock’s fondness for Norse mythology grew less and less pronounced. By the time he began to turn his attention to the French Revolution, both Ossian and the Norse divinities appear more like a memory of the days of old. The year 1764, in which Klopstock probably first became acquainted with Ossian, marks the beginning of a period of renewed activity in the field of the ode, and I am inclined to conclude that Ossian’s appearance helped to further that activity. The influence of Norse mythology upon the works of Klopstock manifests itself largely in externals; similarly does that of Ossian. Klopstock borrowed much from the bardic machinery, just as he did from that of the Norse gods, without at the same time entering very deeply into the spirit of Ossian. In fact, he did not need to, for much of what he found in Ossian was not foreign to his nature. That we are justified in placing Klopstock’s acquaintance with Ossian as far back as 1764 needs no further proof than a reference to the ode “Der Jüngling” written in that year, in which the poet treats the theme of the perishableness of youth, a subject upon which Ossian loved to harp. Indeed, Klopstock’s poem is directly based upon Ossian’s reflections on youth in “The War of Inis–Thona,” p. 203, ll. 1–5.91 The entire dress of the poem is Ossianic.

It strikes us as rather savoring of Ossian, when nature is allowed to take on a dimmer, mistier aspect in the new form of the ode “Wingolf,” e. g., in l. 196 “wallenden Opferrauche” is changed to “schweigenden Dämmerungen;”

ll. 269–71:

Er sprach’s. Izt seh ich über den Altar her,
Auf Opferwolken, Schlegeln mit dicht’rischen
Geweihten Lorbeerschatten kommen,...

become:

Er sang’s. Jetzt sah ich fern in der Dämmerung
Des Hains am Wingolf Schlegeln aus dichtrischen
Geweihten Eichenschatten schweben,...

Dark, dim, distant, dusky, far, misty, silent are epithets that continually occur in Ossian, over whose distant groves of oaks pours the mist in which ghosts hover. The last three lines quoted certainly present a much more Ossianic picture as they now stand than they did in the original version.

In the ode “Hermann” (1767), three bards are introduced lamenting the death of Arminius. An Ossianic chord is struck at the very beginning, when Werdomar, the chief of the bards, sings, ll. 1–2:

Auf diesem Steine der alternden Moose,
Wollen wir sitzen, o Barden, und ihn singen.

The peculiar expression “Steine der alternden Moose” reminds us of the moss of years that covers most of Ossian’s stones.92 Other slight reminders of Ossianic description occur throughout the ode.

The bards in Ossian occasionally exercise the power of looking into the mirror of the future. So in the ode “Weissagung” (1773), the poet seizes the Telyn and prophesies; likewise in the ode “Die Rosstrappe” (1771);93 in both, however, the sacred white horses mentioned by Tacitus, but not found in Ossian, play a part.

A frequent device that we find in Klopstock, especially at the height of his enthusiasm for Ossian, is the conjuring up of the spirits of the departed. Doubtless the songs of Ossian, in which the ghosts of the fallen play such an important rôle, inspired Klopstock with a fondness for this device. We must hold Ossian accountable, for example, when in the ode “Thuiskon” (1764) the hoary ancestor of the German people is made to appear in the grove of the modern German bards. Similarly an old bard is conjured up in the ode “Der Hügel, und der Hain” (1767); in the ode “Rothschilds Gräber” (1766) the souls of the departed appear to the poet, and spirits that hover around Braga or the goddess of the German language occur frequently in the odes of the period that coincides with Klopstock’s most intense interest in Ossian.94

The influence of Ossian is particularly manifest in the first of the odes mentioned in the previous paragraph, in “Thuiskon.” We have but to read the ode and for comparison the “Address to the Evening Star” and the “Apostrophe to Fingal and his Times” in “The Songs of Selma,”95 to notice the resemblance. The time of the ghosts’ appearance in both is at the rising of the evening star, which in “Thuiskon” sends down “entwölkte Schimmer,” while in Ossian it “lifts its head from its clouds.” Compare also ll. 5–6:

So entsenket die Erscheinung des Thuiskon, wie Silber stäubt
Von fallendem Gewässer...

with “Fingal comes like a watery column of mist.”96

Another ode of the same year, “Die frühen Gräber” (1764), shows undoubted traces of Ossian’s influence. The entire Stimmung is Ossianic and Ossianic touches are not wanting, as when the poet says, ll. 9–10:

Ihr Edleren, ach es bewächst
Eure Maale schon ernstes Moos!

The poems of Ossian teem with laments for the departed, whose graves are marked by stones, grown over with moss. The danger of referring everything in Klopstock that savors of the Gaelic bard to Ossian has been pointed out, yet Ossian undoubtedly accentuated and brought into stronger relief much that already existed.

Klopstock’s characterization of the songs of the bards given in ll. 33–40 and 77–84 of the ode “Der Hügel, und der Hain” is based largely upon his knowledge of the poems of Ossian which were supposedly further removed from the limitations of art and closer to nature than the poems of the Greeks.

The description of natural scenery and the comparison at the beginning of the ode “Aganippe und Phiala” (1764) reminds us strongly of Ossian, who was very fond of permitting several as’s and so’s to follow one another in his comparisons, a trick that was widely copied later in the imitations of Ossian and carried to excess.

Ll. 1–10:

      Wie der Rhein im höheren Thal fern herkommt,
Rauschend, als käm’ Wald und Felsen mit ihm,
Hochwogig erhebt sich sein Strom,
Wie das Weltmeer die Gestade
      Mit gehobner Woge bestürmt! Als donnr’ er,
Rauschet der Strom, schäumt, fliegt, stürzt sich herab
Ins Blumengefild, und im Fall
Wird er Silber, das emporstäubt.
      So ertönt, so strömt der Gesang, Thuiskon,
Deines Geschlechts...

Compare, e. g., “Fingal,” Book i, p. 221, ll. 4–10:

“As rushes a stream of foam from the dark shady deep of Cromla, when the thunder is travelling above, and dark–brown night sits on half the hill; through the breaches of the tempest look forth the dim faces of ghosts: So fierce, so vast, so terrible rushed on the sons of Erin. The chief, like a whale of ocean, whom all his billows pursue, poured valour forth as a stream, rolling his might along the shore.”

Ossian is full of long comparisons, with several dependent clauses,97 and loves to heap up adjectives. Although the comparison of song to a stream frequently occurs in Ossian, we have seen 98 that it would be unsafe to attribute Klopstock’s use of the comparison to Ossian, in fact, we find comparisons of the voice to a storm pouring down from the hills in the early books of the Messiah, and of course in classical poetry.

Another example of the nature of Ossian’s influence upon Klopstock, its power to strengthen existing conceptions, is offered by his use of the oak in comparisons. Köster 99 remarks, that Klopstock’s numerous comparisons to the oak are all found in his later dramas, none in the Messiah. The oak, which Klopstock was so fond of regarding as the national tree—die deutsche Eiche—was as much at home in the highlands of Scotland as in the primeval forests of Germany, and according to Ossian occupied just as high a place in the minds of the Caledonians as in those of the Germani. The grove of oaks, the Hain, came to bear the same relation to bardic poetry that Helicon, the Hügel, bore to Greek poetry. It must have pleased Klopstock to find these groves of oaks so frequently mentioned in Ossian, in “The Songs of Selma,” e. g.,100 and without a doubt Ossian’s numerous comparisons to the oak had an influence upon Klopstock. In the Hermannsschlacht, Sc. 6, e. g., he says: “... so stürzt’ er in sein Blut, wie die junge, schlanke Eiche der Donnersturm bricht.” Compare “Temora,” Bk. iii, p. 328, ll. 25–6: “Like a young oak falls Tur–lathon;” “Carthon,” p. 163, l. 20: “There he lies, a goodly oak, which sudden blasts overturned!” etc., etc.

Klopstock borrowed a name from Ossian and employed it freely in his odes, Selma, the name of the royal residence 101 of Fingal. He grew quite fond of the euphonious name, used it to apply to a girl, coined a corresponding masculine form Selmar, and out of the two made a pair of ideal lovers. Vetterlein 102 many years ago suggested that the names might have been taken from Selim and Selima, names given by Prevod to a pair of tender lovers in the Memoires d’un homme de qualité;103 but no one of the present day would subscribe to that opinion. Had he kept the name of the maid in “The Songs of Selma,” Colma, he would have been induced to call her lover, whose real name is Salgar, Colmar, and that would have led to confusion with the Ossianic hero of that name. The ode “Selmar und Selma,” written in 1748, was originally entitled “Daphnis und Daphne.” About the same time that the change of names took place, another ode was written with the title “Selma und Selmar” (1766), in which the lovers promise that the first to die will appear to the other. This is a fancy that we frequently meet in the latter half of the 18th century, and it found nourishment in Ossian. The name Selma occurs furthermore in the ode “Die Erscheinung” (1777), and Selma and Selmar are the two ideal lovers in the ode “Das Bündniss,” as late as 1789. The combination grew to be quite a popular one, and so we find “Elegien von Selma und Selmar” in Kosegarten’s Thränen und Wonnen (Stralsund, 1778), a poem “Selmar und Selma” by Friedrich Stolberg 104 that shows the influence of Ossian, another Ossianic poem of the same title dedicated to Christian Stolberg,105 and many more. The popularity of the name Selma was still further increased by the translation of “The Songs of Selma” that appeared in Werthers Leiden.

The Hermannsschlacht and the larger part of Hermann und die Fürsten were written at the height of Klopstock’s enthusiasm for Ossian and we shall not search in vain for signs of the bard’s influence in these dramas, particularly in the former. One of the most important and striking constituents of these dramas are the songs of the bards, interspersed throughout, which are thoroughly Ossianic in tone and spirit. Klopstock’s bards, like those of Ossian, encourage the warriors to battle, proclaim the fame of the mighty; they tell of the deeds of the past, and when they sing: “Höret Thaten der vorigen Zeit,” we recall Ossian’s “tales of the times of old,” or his “deeds of other times.” The three choruses in Sc. 3 of the Hermannsschlacht beginning with this exhortation are all decidedly Ossianic, e. g.:

Höret Thaten der vorigen Zeit!106
  Zwar braucht ihr, euch zu entflammen, die Thaten der vorigen Zeit nicht,
    Doch tönen sie eurem horchenden Ohr
      Wie das Säuseln im Laube, wenn die Mondennacht glänzt.107

Compare Messiah, xx, ll. 495–9:

Jetzo schwieg der Gesang; doch tönete fort der gehauchte Hall, und die Saite. So tönet der Hain, wenn weit in der Ferne Ströme durch Felsen stürzen; und nah von den Bächen es rieselt: Wenn es vom Winde rauscht in den tausendblättrigen Ulmen.

Ossian has numerous comparisons to wind and storm, breeze and blast and gale, in much the same tone, for instance the following, “Berrathon,” p. 379, ll. 1–3: “As the noise of an aged grove beneath the roaring wind, when a thousand ghosts break the trees by night.” After the bards have finished in the second scene, first edition, Siegmar exclaims: “Das war gut, Barden, dass Ihr von den Thaten unsrer Väter sangt!” Compare: “... sing nun dem Heere von den Thaten seiner Väter.” “Lathmon,” p. 272, ll. 7–8: “Their words were of the deeds of their fathers,” etc.

When the bards in Sc. 2 sing:

Die Räder an dem Kriegeswagen Wodans
Rauschen wie des Walds Ströme die Gebirg’ herab!

we are reminded of the car of Cuthullin in the first book of “Fingal” and of Ossian’s roaring streams that pour down the hills. Compare Hermann und die Fürsten, Sc. 1:

Hermann stritt.
So stürzt von dem Gebirg herab
Mit heulendem Sturme der Winterstrom
Und breitet ringsum aus in dem Thal die herrschenden Wogen.

To liken a host of warriors unto a ‘gathered cloud’ or a ‘ridge of mist’ is a favorite device of Ossian, and similarly in Sc. 2 of the Hermannsschlacht,108 two choruses sing:

... Da zogen wir Deutschen uns
Zusammen gleich einer Wolke.

And in the third scene a bard remarks: “Sie ziehn sich, wie ein dicker Nebel, langsam in den Vorderbusch.” And when the bards sing in the second scene:

Weit halle dein Schild! dein Schlachtruf töne,
Wie das Weltmeer an dem Felsengestade!

or in the first edition:

Wie ein Donnersturm in dem Felsengebirg!

we can point to Ossian’s shouts that are “louder than a storm” or like “thunder on distant hills.”

“Die Flamme des gerechten Zorns,” Hermannsschlacht, chorus, Sc. 3, calls up Ossian’s ‘flame of wrath,’ but undoubtedly the Bible is the source of both.

In Sc. 6 we have the following lines:

Seht ihr nicht auf der Mondglanzwolke
  An der Eiche Wipfel,
    Eure Brüder schweben, und eure Väter?
  .....
    Sie blicken auf euch herab.

Similarly in Ossian the ghosts of the fathers that float on clouds look down upon the warriors.

In Sc. 11 two choruses sing:

Wie des Wiederhalls in der Sommernacht war seines Schildes Ton,
Wie des vollen Mondes der Glanz!

and so “Carric–Thura,” p. 151, l. 27, “That shield like the full–orbed moon,” etc., and echoing shields without number.

One striking feature of the Highland scenery according to Ossian is the fact that everything—forest and heath, bay and stream, grove and vale, hill and isle, rocks and fields and banks and walls and numerous other things—is very susceptible to the echo, “the son of the rock,” and the fondness that Klopstock and the bards begin to exhibit for the echo about this time must be traced back largely to Ossian. In addition to the passage just quoted, we have in Sc. 2, e. g., “Wir haben... den Gesang in den Felsen des Wiederhalls gehört,” “Lasst die Namen... in allen Felsen des Wiederhalls laut tönen,” etc. In the same scene the bards sing:

Ruf in des Wiederhalls Felsengebirg
  Durch das Graun des nächtlichen Hains,
    Dass......
      Es ertöne wie ein Donnersturm!

In Sc. 11: “Wiederhalls Kluft,” etc.

A few words as to the poet’s attitude towards Ossian in his old age may complete our consideration of Klopstock. As he grew older, and other affairs, above all else the French Revolution, began to engross his attention, Ossian gradually lost interest for him, although he was never entirely forgotten. As late as 1797, Klopstock writes to Böttiger under date of November 9:109 “Wissen Sie schon etwas von der Ausgabe von Ossians Gesängen, die jetzt in England in seiner Sprache gemacht wird? Ist die Übersezung getreu? Sind Anmerkungen über das Zeltische dabey?” Unfortunately he died before the long–heralded edition was finally published. When his enthusiastic admiration for Ossian subsided and took on a saner aspect, when his views on the subject of the relation of the Celts to the old German tribes assumed a more scientific character, he could not allow Ossian to occupy the position assigned to him at first. Although Klopstock’s fondness for the Celtic Homer diminished in the course of years, it nevertheless possessed a more lasting character than that of Goethe and of Schiller, to whom, as we shall see, it was merely a passing inspiration. Klopstock’s sober second thought revealed to him that he had occasionally gone too far in his blind adoration, and so we find that in later revisions of his works Ossianic reminiscences are occasionally expunged. The eulogistic verses that appeared in the first edition of the Gelehrtenrepublik (1774)110 were omitted in the second; the ode “Teutone” (1773) gives the first fifty–two lines of “Unsre Sprache” (1767) almost literally, but substitutes sixteen new lines for the eight lines of encomium found in the latter.111 In the first two Bardiete, the bards play an almost overwhelming rôle with their numerous songs, whereas in Hermanns Tod the bards appear in one scene only, the fifteenth. Then two passages appeared in the first edition of the Hermannsschlacht that were omitted or revised in the second, as e. g., the chorus beginning “Höret Thaten der vorigen Zeit!” in Sc. 2.—Late in life Klopstock in his correspondence with Böttiger occasionally refers to Ossian. One letter has been quoted from. Under date of January 6, 1798, he writes to Böttiger: “Hierbey Macd[onald] und einige Aufschr[iften]. Ich werde eher keinen bestimten Begriff von Ossian bekommen, als bis man mir (könte es nicht Macd. thun?) merklich verschiedene Stellen aus ihm völlig wörtlich übersezt. Sie sehen, dass ich nur Stellen meinen kan, die Oss. gewiss zugehören.”112 If we read between the lines, we can see feelings of doubt and if we are to place entire confidence in a letter of Sir James Mackintosh to Malcolm Laing,113 Klopstock at last lost his faith in the authenticity of the songs of Ossian altogether—a strange ending to his earlier unbounded enthusiasm. Sir James writes: “I consider your Ossian and Farmer’s ‘Essay’ on Shakspeare’s pretended learning as the two most complete demonstrations of literary positions that have ever been produced... You know how bitterly old Klopstock complained of you for having dispelled his Ossianic illusions...”

§2. the Bards — Gerstenberg114

The bardic poetry, the way for which had been prepared by Mallet’s influential work, the Introduction à l’histoire de Danemarc with its Supplément: Monumens de la Mythologie et de la Poësie des Celtes et particulièrement des Anciens Scandinaves, and which had received its impulse from Macpherson’s Ossian, aided by the mistaken acceptation of the barditus mentioned by Tacitus, soon gained other supporters, among whom the most prominent were Gerstenberg, Denis and Kretschmann. The various other representatives of the poetry, which, carried to an extreme, became ridiculous and was justly characterized as the Bardengebrüll or Bardengeschrei, were on the whole devoid of talent and scarcely call for serious treatment.

Much of what has been said with reference to Klopstock’s reception of Ossian applies also to the bards, only we see that the thing deteriorated into a fad through imitation. It began to take on the character of mere play; the poets styled themselves bards and gave themselves bardic names, e. g., Klopstock—Werdomar, Gerstenberg—Thorlaug, Denis—Sined,115 Kretschmann—Rhingulph, Hartmann—Telynhard, Dusch—Ryno, Haschka—Cronnan, etc.116

Just as Klopstock had sacrificed the lyre for the telyn, so his followers. The harp of the bards replaced the Zionitic harp. The poet, or rather bard,117 was no longer crowned with the laurel–wreath but with the leaf of the oak. To–day we smile at these vagaries, but these men were very earnest in their play. Kretschmann, and not Klopstock, is responsible for most of the nonsense. The most pleasing phase of the movement is its patriotic character, and we must give the bards credit for the earnestness with which they strove to inculcate a feeling for national unity. Then they praise virtue and maidenly modesty, a cheerful sign for that age.

If these bards had restricted themselves to singing the mighty deeds of the past, it would not have been so bad, but when Arminius and the old Germani had become exhausted, they came down to the present and endeavored to surround it with an air of antiquity. As a result bardic poetry became largely a matter of vers d’occasion. The unfavorable critics seized upon the aberrations and made a laughing–stock of the whole school, and so the few good illustrations had to suffer with the large majority of those whose poverty of conception and general inability have prevented their names from being handed down to posterity. Thus long before Ossian’s influence in Germany had ceased, bardic poetry was a thing of the past. Much of the machinery of Ossian’s bards was borrowed by the German bardic poets and even the druids were transferred to German soil. The old Norse mythology, which found such ready acceptance by Klopstock and Gerstenberg, is not so important in the poetry of Denis, Kretschmann, and the numerous minor bards. What the bards copied then from Ossian were the general paraphernalia, the characteristic motifs, the tone of the harp, the echoing grove, the ghosts of the departed,118 and the like. The love for the dismal heath, the stormy sea, and other phases of Ossianic description of wild and forlorn nature, can not be said to predominate in the bardic poetry, although it is frequently noticeable, as e. g., in Maler Müller, who in his bardic poetry loses himself absolutely in the Ossianic descriptions of nature.119 The importance of Ossian’s landscape painting lay in the circumstance that it acted upon the mood of the reader, and although the general tone of the nature depicted in Ossian does not change much, it was a marked advance to have a description of nature invested with some internal significance, to bring nature and the feelings into interaction with each other. Ossian again and again inserts a picture of nature at the opening of an episode and this device was frequently copied in the bardic poetry, with this only difference: in Macpherson the connection between the introductory description and the following action is evident, whereas in the bardic imitations it generally strikes the reader as something irrelevant. When Ossianic comparisons are introduced, as they frequently are, they usually bear the stamp of servile imitation, being cold and showing no trace of intense personal feeling. At the same time, however, an attempt is occasionally made to enter into the Stimmung of Ossian, reflected at first in mere imitation, but finally striking out for itself.120 What the bards did not copy were his peculiar delineations of character, his management of the action,121 although the noble qualities of Fingal and his heroes are transferred to the princes who are being extolled. All details will be left for the separate discussions to follow.

Heinrich Wilhelm Gerstenberg

We have included Gerstenberg among the bards, but he was far from being a bard as we apply that term to Denis and Kretschmann. Denis wrote little poetry that was not in the bardic vein, whereas Gerstenberg moved in many spheres. Gerstenberg was not a prolific writer, yet three productions of his were quite influential in their day: The Briefe über Merkwürdigkeiten der Litteratur, the Gedicht eines Skalden, and Ugolino; and in all three the shades of Ossian are visible in one form or another. His early productions, including the Tändeleien, written in the Anacreontic manner, do not concern us here and we shall turn our attention at once to the Schleswigische Litteraturbriefe.122 An account of the place that these letters occupy in the history of German literature, of their tendency and their influence, would lead us too far afield. We are interested here solely in the eighth letter and more particularly in the first portion of the letter which discusses the “Memoire eines Irrländers über die ossianischen Gedichte.”123 Here for the first time in a German journal we meet with serious doubts as to the genuineness of the poems. Gerstenberg has occasionally been praised, and deservedly so, for having had the sagacity to see through the forgery at once; and he deserves particular credit also for having had the courage to stand by his convictions and to publish personal opinions that were almost certain to be received, if not with scorn, at least with indifference. It was no doubt Gerstenberg to whom Herder referred in his Briefwechsel über Ossian as one who so “obstinately doubted the truth and authenticity of the Scotch Ossian.” Gerstenberg realized that he stood almost alone in his opinion and he refers to the unanimity of the critics near the beginning of his letter. His doubts were not called forth by the “Mémoire,” but had presented themselves to him upon his first perusal of the songs. He says in the letter: “Dass entweder Hr. Macpherson seinen Text ausserordentlich verfälscht, oder auch das untergeschobne Werk einer neuern Hand allzu leichtgläubig für ein genuines angenommen hätte, glaubten wir gleich aus den mancherley Spuren des Modernen sowol, als aus den verschiednen kleinen hints, die der Dichter sich aus dem Homer x. gemerkt zu haben schien, wahrzunehmen.”124 The more direct proofs he lacked at first were furnished by the author of the “Mémoire,” a synopsis of whose arguments he proceeds to give in a few lines, closing with the words: “... ich enthalte mich aber eines weitern Details, da Sie diess alles in der Urschrift selbst nicht ohne Vergnügen nachlesen werden.” It is unfortunate that Gerstenberg did not pursue the subject further; his views would no doubt have been exceedingly interesting and rather refreshing. He then passes over to the Reliques, which he stamps as more reliable than the songs of Ossian.

Der Skalde (1766).—The same year in which the first two collections of the Schleswigische Litteraturbriefe were published also marks the appearance of the Gedicht eines Skalden, or Der Skalde, as it was called later, one of the best poems written in the bardic manner, and one that exerted great influence upon the bardic poetry. Old Norse mythology was here introduced and combined with a few Ossianic touches. Knowing that Gerstenberg disbelieved in the authenticity of the poems, we should scarcely expect traces of their influence at this time. Der Skalde actually contains but few Ossianic reminiscences, particularly when compared with what we find in some of the poems of Denis. As Pfau has pointed out,125 Gerstenberg no doubt derived from Ossian the idea of having the ghost of Thorlaug (Himintung) arise from his grave. There is nothing in old Norse mythology corresponding to the ghost–world of Ossian, and the only thing that distinguishes the appearance of Thorlaug’s ghost from that of one in Ossian is that Gerstenberg has breathed a Christian spirit into his resurrection, in contradistinction to the dismal and sometimes terrible apparitions of Ossian. We are reminded of Ossian’s ghosts when Gerstenberg sings:

(1. Canto.)

... Wo ruht
Mein schwebender Geist auf luftiger Höh?126

(2. Canto.)

Welch feierliches Graun
Steigt langsam über diese Hügel,
Wie im Nachtgewölk
Neugeschiedner Seelen, auf?

Mir schwindelt! durch Jahrhunderte
Blick’ ich, durch trübe ferne Nebel.127

Compare “Cath–Loda,” Duan iii, first four ll.128 The tone is Ossianic in the third canto when Thorlaug sings:

Einst, da ich einsam und verlassen,
........
Am Ufer irrt’, und jeden Hauch
Der Luft, der nach der Küste blies,
Mit meinen Seufzern flügelte...129

‘Lonely’ and ‘forlorn’ are standing epithets of Ossian, and “Fingal,” Bk. iv, p. 252, last line, has: “My sighs shall be on Cromla’s wind;” etc., etc. Pfau 130 has suggested that Ossian may be responsible for the abrupt manner in which the strife between Thorlaug and his foe is commenced, for Ossian’s heroes are always ready to draw the sword. I think it very questionable that Ossian’s influence was at work here. Pfau, however, has correctly observed that the epithet ‘red’ as applied to the eye of Thorlaug’s foe (3. Canto) must be ascribed to Ossian:

Zur Wuth erhitzt und Funken sprühend
Aus rothem Auge,....131

Occasional scenic resemblances to Ossian are also found, e. g., in the second canto we have the “silent stone of the hills”132 and:

Im Schatten dieses Eichenhains,

Die stolzesten der Wipfel rauschten,
Und leise Bäche murmelten.

Vom Hügel braust im Bogenschuss
Ein breiter Quell, schwillt auf zum breitern Fluss,
Springt donnernd über jähe Spitzen,

Der volle Busen wallt auf zarten Wogen.
Die sternenvolle Nacht umschwebet sie,
..........
Sieh den gelindern West ihr Haar umfliessen!
O sieh den hellern Mond zu ihren Füssen!133

Compare “Dar–Thula,” p. 281, ll. 23–4: “The blast came rustling in the tops of Seláma’s groves;” “Fingal,” Bk. i, p. 216, ll. 16–7: “murmuring rivulets;” “Temora,” Bk. iii, p. 326, l. 36–p. 327, l. 1: “On Crona... there bursts a stream.... It swells in its... course.... Then comes it white from the hill;” “Temora,” Bk. iv, p. 338, l. 33: “Streams leap down from the rocks,” etc. Ossianic in spirit is also the following description: (4. Canto.)

... rauh und wüste,
In trübem Dunkel schauerte die Küste;
Kein Himmel leuchtete mild durch den Hain.
..........
In Höhlen lauschte Graun...
Und was am Ufer scholl, war Kriegsgeschrei.134

Iduna. Ariadne auf Naxos.—Gerstenberg very soon turned his attention completely away from the old Norse mythology and we have only one other poem written under its spell, Iduna, which also contains several traces of Ossian’s influence, e. g., the line: “So glitt ich auf Dünsten dahin!”135 “Am Busen des Windes”136 recalls Ossian’s “on the bosom of winds,”137 as “Des Mädchens mit den weissen Armen”138 suggests Ossian’s “white armed maidens.” The influence is visible also in occasional touches in the cantata Ariadne auf Naxos (1765), for example when Ariadne sings:

Wie weint’ ich heimlich Freudenthränen! ach,
Wie hob sich diese Brust!
Wie wallte sie,...139

we involuntarily recall the secret tears of joy and the rising and swelling of the breasts of Ossian’s maidens, and when she speeds “wie ein Strahl vom Himmel seinen Armen zu”140 we are reminded of Ossian’s frequent comparisons of a hero or heroine to a beam of the sky or from heaven, or to a stream of light, to a sun–beam or a moon–beam. The entire atmosphere of the cantata is really Ossianic: the maiden lamenting on a desert rock surrounded by the wild ocean:

Mit fliegendem Haare! wohin!
Irr’ ich am Ufer, und bin
Das Spiel der Winde!141

What is more, the plot reminds us very much of a portion of “Berrathon,” as will be seen by a look at the argument of the latter.

A number of Gerstenberg’s shorter poems make use of the grove with its moss and the oak, the echo, the harp, and other bardic properties, without, however, acquiring the real bardic character. Ossian’s influence is here too inconsiderable to warrant a discussion of the poems in detail.

Ugolino.142—The influence that this drama, which was finished in 1767, exerted upon the Storm and Stress movement, its important bearing upon the popularization of Shakspere in Germany, and questions of a similar tenor cannot be entered into here, yet we cannot pass by the drama without pointing out at least some phases of Ossian’s influence, which, while not comparable in importance to that of Shakspere, is nevertheless not inconsiderable. The danger confronts us of attributing Shaksperian characteristics to Ossian. The bard’s influence is noticeable particularly in the figurative language, e. g., when Ugolino in the first act says: “Dass ich nicht in dem gerechten Zorne meiner Seele mich erheben... konnte!”143 Compare Ossian’s “rage of his soul,” “rise in wrath,” and the like. In the same act Anselmo says: “Dein Kommen ist mir erwünschter als der jugendliche Morgen,”144 to which compare “Comala,” p. 139, l. 22: “bright as the coming forth of the morning.” Jacobs 145 suggests that Gerstenberg probably had his Ossian in mind when he had Francesco say in the first act: “Wenn er sich nur nicht... herab stürzt, gleich dem erhabnen Vogel, der sich ins Steinthal wirft.”146 Compare “Temora,” Bk. ii, p. 321, ll. 31–2: “Descending like the eagle of heaven,... the son of Trenmor came;” Bk. viii, p. 369, ll. 11–2: “... the windy rocks, from which I spread my eagle–wings,” etc., etc. In the second act, Anselmo considers himself “flüchtiger als ein junges Reh,”147 a comparison of which Ossian is exceedingly fond.148 Gaddo and Anselmo shed regular Ossianic “tears of joy.” In the second act Anselmo refers to Francesco having ridden off “auf dem Rücken des Windes”;149 compare “The War of Caros,” p. 193, l. 26: “The rustling winds have carried him far away;”150 “Temora,” Bk. viii, p. 366, l. 21: “From this I shall mount the breeze.” Ossianic furthermore are Anselmo’s exclamations: “Lasst die Hörner tönen am hallenden Fels!”151 and “o du mit der finstern Stirne!”152 which call up Ossian’s ‘echoing rock’ and his ‘dark’ or ‘gloomy brow.’

When Gerstenberg has Ugolino say of his wife in the third act: “Kalt [ist] der Schnee ihrer Brust,”153 and when he speaks of the “Seufzer ihres Busens,”154 he was no doubt thinking of the snowy breasts of Ossian’s maidens and of the sighs of their bosoms. In the same act Francesco uses a comparison that is taken directly from Ossian:155 “Du wirst fallen,” he says, “wie der Stamm einer Eiche, alle deine Äste um dich hergebreitet.”156 Compare “Temora,”157 Bk. iii, p. 328, ll. 25–6: “Like a young oak falls Tur–lathon, with his branches round him,” etc. In the last act Ugolino, speaking of the death of his son, says: “Wann ward dieser erste Ast vom Stamme gerissen?”158 His opening monolog in the fourth act shows a decided Ossianic influence; e. g., “sein bleifarbigtes wässeriges Angesicht tobte vom Sturm seiner Seele; er wälzte seine... Augen weit hervor,”159 etc. In Ossian we have a “watery and dim face,” a “grey watery face,” and a soul “folded in a storm,” and as for rolling eyes, that is a property that no Ossianic warrior may be without, and one of the first that a Storm and Stress poet would be led to adopt. Further along in the monolog, Ugolino says: “Doch der grosse Morgen wird ja kommen! schrecklich, dunkelroth und schwül von Gewittern wird er ja kommen! In seinem schwarzen Strahle will ich erlöschen! In seiner gebärenden Wolke soll, wie Feuer vom Himmel, mein Geist über Pisa stehn!”160 This picture is as Ossianic as it can be. The ghosts of Ossian sit upon their clouds; they ride on beams of fire, and are compared to meteors of fire or to a terrible light. Ossianic spirits appear again a little later in the act, when Francesco says of Anselmo: “... seine Geister scheinen sich zu sammeln,”161 and in the last act, where we read of a “wandernden Geist,” which shall remain near the beloved ones.162 And then Francesco: “Ah! deine Geister sind im Aufruhr! Sammle sie, geliebter theurer Anselmo.” All this, however, is only a weak foretaste of the great importance that the ghosts of Ossian assume in Gerstenberg’s later drama, in Minona, to the discussion of which I shall proceed after a short reference to Der Waldjüngling. The illustrations given are not intended to be exhaustive, but to give a general idea of the character of Ossianic traces as they are exhibited in the various works.

Der Waldjüngling.—As an appendix to his treatise on Ugolino, Jacobs published a fragment by Gerstenberg entitled Der Waldjüngling, which in spirit shows a combination of Rousseau’s doctrine of the return to nature plus the leaning towards Norse antiquity, towards the poetry of the bards. The combination is attempted by sketching the life of a primitive man, un homme sauvage, transferred to the woods of Scandinavia. The small portion of the drama that has been preserved to us was written probably in 1770.163

As it incorporates the bardic spirit in its very essence, we shall not search in vain for reminiscences of Ossian, which, as in Ugolino, are met with in large part in the epithets and images. The Scandinavian scenery partakes of the characteristics of the Scotch Highlands as pictured by Ossian. The names of the characters, Hvanar, Cindiskraka (cp. Ossian’s Craca), Svanhilde, Arnas, Flino, Heener, Mimur, have Celtic as well as Germanic elements, and these characters talk much like the characters of Ossian. Mimur, e. g., in l. 122 laments in the strain of Ossian: “Ich bin alt und schwach,” etc. In l. 9, Cindiskraka is addressed as “Du Bewohnerinn der Felshöhle mit dem krähschwarzen Haar,” to which compare Ossian’s “dweller of the rock,”164 and hair “dark as the raven’s wing.”165 Further along (l. 36) we have a flute “Die des armen Mädchens verschwiegenen Kummer einsam seufzt.” This is a typical line. Ossian’s maidens have a habit of sitting ‘alone,’ nursing their ‘silent grief,’ giving vent to their sorrow in ‘secret sighs.’—Mimur styles Hilde (l. 78) in true Ossianic language: “Der Ruhm der Hirtinnen auf dem Gebirg,” and invests the forest youth in ll. 114–5 with the characteristic attributes of the ideal heroes of Ossian, ‘terrible’ in battle, but in peace ‘generous and mild’:166

... furchtbar an Kraft des Arms,
Doch sanft, doch freundlich, doch gut;...

Ossianic is Hvanar’s characterization of himself (l. 152): “Ich bin ein Sohn des Meeres, rauh, wie der Sturm,...” and a few Ossianic images from nature also occur.

Minona.—We have no conclusive proof that Gerstenberg later in life lost his early scruples in regard to Ossian’s authenticity, but if circumstantial evidence carry any weight, there can be no doubt that he came to regard Ossian as genuine, at least for a time. And this evidence is furnished by the drama Minona, first published in 1785, Gerstenberg’s favorite production and one that gave him the greatest concern in the preparation of the edition of his works late in life. For this edition (1815–6) he worked over the entire drama and increased it from four acts to five, and by assigning to it the place of honor at the head of the list, furnished testimony to his fondness for this particular child of his muse. The action of the drama is laid in Britain in the fifth century, at the time when the Low German continental tribes were called over by the Britons to assist them against the incursions of the Picts. The Romans, who had refused to aid the British province against the Picts, also play an important part. Everything is mixed together, and of course anachronisms abound: Norse gods, skalds, druids, bards, Ossianic spirits, all are thrown together in one multi–colored complex. The spirit of the play is Ossianic throughout, and external as well as internal characters of Ossian’s influence are not lacking. Several of the characters are taken directly from Ossian, others only in name, e. g., Trenmor, King of Morven; Minona, his sister; Ryno, a bard of Ossian; Swaran, Lord of Lochlin. Edelstan, the hero, lord of Inisthona, is a son of Frothal and a grandson of Bosmina. During the perusal of the drama we are continually reminded that the author has made a thorough study of his Ossian. Selma is the name of the royal residence in Morven, just as it is in Ossian. Minona is a typical Celtic maiden as described by Ossian, just as Ryno is the Ossianic bard comme il faut. Just as Ossian’s Minona was possessed of the gift of song,167 so Gerstenberg’s Minona has the reputation of being the “gesangreichste der Harfen Selma’s.”168 In the review of the drama that appeared in the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek,169 Minona is characterized as “grossmüthig und liebevoll, aber auch sittsam und duldend, eine würdige Schülerin der Barden,” and Ryno as “ein kraftvoller, biedrer Barde.” The Roman Äzia betrothed to Aurelius, a Roman commander, in spite of her dazzling personal charms, suffers in comparison with the modest Celtic maiden in much the same way as the heroes of Homer were often put to shame by their Celtic rivals.

The Ossianic scene par excellence is the third division of the first scene of the second act, where Äzia and Edelstan are interrupted in a tête–à–tête by Ryno, the bard of Ossian. Nothing can convey a better idea of the hold that Ossian had on Gerstenberg than to quote a passage from this scene.170 Ryno announces himself as:

“ehemals Ferchio’s Gefährt’ in jener berühmten Schlacht deines Vaters Frothal zu Inisthona, ein Barde Ossians, heisse Ryno.”

Edelstan. Ryno?—ein Gefährte Ferchio’s?—ein Barde Ossian’s?—Welche Thaten, welche andre Zeiten,... rufst du in mein Gedächtniss zurück?—Ryno?—... der mich jene unvergesslichen Gesänge von den Schlachten Lochlin’s lehrte, wie Ossian, die Stimme Selma’s, seinen geliebtern Oscar, den Mann aus andern Zeiten, nach Angeley—in der Sprache Morvens wie tönender! nach Inisthona—zu Hülfe sandte dem Vater meiner Väter, dem trauernden Annir—

Ryno. Wie der blutige Cormalo dem Arm des Starken aus Morven erlag, ‘dass die Söhne der vergifteten Lano, wo die Wolke des Tages rastet, gleich dunkelbraunen Hindinnen dahinflohen, unfähig den Gram ihres Stolzes zu rächen;’ wie Fingals holde Tochter, Bosmina mit den schwarzrollenden Augen, Runa’s tönende Halle betrat, ein wiederkehrender Stern dem Abend der Tage Annirs:—Bosmina später vermählt dem gewaltigen Ina, der einzigen übriggebliebenen Stütze des jammernden Annir, da Ruro fiel! da Argon fiel! dem hinterlassenen Säuglinge Ruro’s, die Mutter des königlichen Frothal, der erhabne Stamm deines so herrlich wieder aufblühenden Geschlechts...

Edelstan....

Ryno.... Gesegneter, wenn ich mich dir ein Bote des Friedens genaht hätte, würdig erfunden, den getrennten Stamm einer Eiche wieder aufzurichten, dass er noch einmal umherschaue, wie er vormals stand, sein tausendastiges Haupt weit umher verbreitend von Selma’s Halle bis zur Halle Runa’s, von Inisthona’s wogigem Strande bis über Morven’s fernher rauschende Thale!”171

How characteristically a bit of Ossianic history is told here and how faithfully the language of the poems of Ossian is copied! We should have to search long to find a passage in German literature that shows a more complete immersion in the spirit of Ossian.

In the scene from which we have just quoted, Fingal is called “das finstre Auge Morvens,” Trenmor “zog mit dem Winde seiner Küste luftig daher,” Fingal draws his sword against Lochlin “da Cuchullin unter Swaran’s Zehntausenden schwankte,” Ossian is referred to as “die Harfe aus andern Zeiten,”172 etc., etc. It is scarcely necessary to give parallels from Ossian. Any one who has ever read a poem of Ossian will be struck by the close resemblance of all that has been quoted above. The historical allusions, the comparisons, the metaphorical expressions, the standing epithets, are all taken directly from the songs of Ossian.

Before taking up the spirits of Ossian, and in that connection the lyrical passages which are given much prominence throughout the drama—especially in the third act—I shall quote a few more instances of borrowings from Ossian. We have in the drama a hand “blendender als Schnee”173 and a “blendend weisse Hand;”174 Minona has dark–black hair, which “floss vermuthlich in niedlichen Ringelchen über ihren blendend weissen Nacken herunter.”175 Ryno and Edelstan “glaubten... ein Sausen in der Luft zu hören, als wenn der Wind sich erhebt.”176 The motif of Edelstan’s delivery from the cave is taken from Ossian, “Calthon and Colmal,”177 as is Minona’s imprisonment in a cave on the isle of ghosts.178 The scenic description of the cave in which Minona is held captive is characteristic: “Scene eine dunkle Höhle; über der Höhle der Mond im ersten Viertel, der ein schwaches Licht in das Innere der Höhle wirft.”179

Nothing gave the critics so much concern upon the first appearance of Minona as the machinery of the spirits. They begin their influential incantations in the second act, and from that moment on occupy a prominent position in the economy of the play to the very end. Some of these lyrical passages are by no means of a mean order, but we are now and again at a loss to grasp the poet’s meaning. The critic in the Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften, speaking of the songs at the close, says: “Diese Gesänge sind, uns wenigstens, verschlossene Worte;”180 and again, speaking of that of the spirits in the second act: “Dass uns manche Stellen dieses Liedes ganz unerklärbar geblieben sind, hat uns desto weniger befremdet, da, wie Ryno oben versicherte, selbst nur wenigen Barden die ätherischen Ströme dieses Gesanges verständlich sind.”181 And in the same strain the critic in the Allgemeine Literaturzeitung writes: “In dem was die Geister zuletzt singen... sind schöne Verse: Aber manche so schwer zu verstehn, dass der Leser, geschweige der Hörer ihren Sinn nicht fasst..”.182 The same reviewer refers to the unusually lofty, simple Ossianic tone of the spirit scenes. The importance assigned to these spirits in the structure of the drama can best be judged by reading Gerstenberg’s own view as expressed in the second Schreiben prefixed to his works: “Mit den Ossianischen Geistern, über die mancher damalige Kunstrichter den Kopf schüttelte bin ich weniger verlegen: sie sind die Unterlage des Ganzen, und ich brauche der Anlage nach, ihnen nur mehr Spielraum zu verschaffen; mein Drama von den Angelsachsen würde nicht zugleich meine Oper von Minona und der Zukunft seyn, wenn ich die Geister aus dem Spiele liesse.”183 This is not the place to discuss the question whether Gerstenberg was justified in the introduction of this mystic spirit–world into his drama, and so I shall proceed to look at the songs at once. The ghosts, or rather the voices of the ghosts, make their first appearance, as has been observed, in the second act. Minona, captive in the cave is singing a song to the accompaniment of the harp, when enchanting spirit voices become audible and cause her to be filled with rapture. This song, in which she is interrupted, as well as her other airs and recitatives, are Ossianic in tone and motif, indeed, wherever Gerstenberg falls into the lyric strain, Ossian’s influence becomes apparent in one feature or another:

In deiner süssen Stimme will ich zittern,
  Ein Seufzer der Liebe,
  Süss wie ein Harfenton!
Wenn leisere Luft dich umweht,
Vernimm das Wehen meiner Liebe:
  Minonens Geist schwebt über dir!
.......
Hinweg du Wolke zwischen ihm und mir!
  Horch! durch die Halle saust
  Der Wind der Mitternacht.184

Minona gives expression to her rapture in ecstatic terms, of course in Ossianic language, and what is more, in Macpherson’s rhythmic prose. A paragraph or two may serve for illustration:

Diese Fluth von wunderbaren Tönen, die sich wie ein Meer über mich ausgiesst, die durch den hohlen Abgrund der Felsen im Donner des Wohllauts daher rollt, ist sie ein Spiel der Lüfte in den Wölbungen der Tiefe? widerprallend an den jähen Wänden des innern Gebirgs?185

[Ist’s] Vielleicht Fingal’s Schild aus der hängenden Wolke herab? vielleicht Fingals geistige Hand, die an dem Schilde vorüberrauscht?

Vielleicht die tonvolle Harfe aus andern Lüften, Ossians Harfe aus andern Zeiten?186

These voices have given Minona a foretaste of the delights beyond the grave:

Wo, mich schwesterlich bewillkommend, Malvina, Bosmina, Comala, Guthona, die holdseligen, von ihrem und meinem Ossian so edel besungenen, Töchter der Vorzeit alle, in der Begeisterung seines erhabenen Gesanges zu seinen Füssen hingelagert und horchend, beisammen sässen, und ich, seine neu angelangte... Zuhörerin, in Wonnethränen der namenlosesten Gefühle überflösse!187

The ghosts that chant these songs are endowed with all the qualities of their Ossianic prototypes—especially with the gift of foretelling the future—and why should they not, seeing that they are intended to represent the incarnation of the songs of Ossian.188 They are the spirits of Ossian, and the spirits of Ossian “sind die veredelte Menschlichkeit selbst.”189 As for the songs of the ghosts, the solos, duets, choruses, and what not, as they begin in this act and are continued throughout the third and fifth acts, it would be impossible to take up each verse in detail. Suffice it to say, that the songs bear the ideal stamp of the influence of Ossian, which is expressed in more ways than one. I quote one or two passages in illustration. Several voices sing in the second act:

Stolzern Tritts erhebt vom Saum der Wolke sich
Fingal, den Arm auf seinen Schild gelehnt.190

Compare “Fingal,” Bk. vi, p. 261, l. 24: “Fingal leaned on the shield;” also Ossian’s skirt, edge, or side of the cloud. So in the third act Minona sings:

Schnell wie ein Blitz der Mitternacht,
Zerriss, aus seiner Wolke Saum,
Der Felsen aufgethürmte Last
Ein stärkrer unnennbarer Arm.191

Compare “The War of Inis–Thona,” p. 206, ll. 15–6: “Stormy clouds... their edges are tinged with lightning,” etc.—Minona is referred to by the ghosts as the ‘daughter of Selma,’ and Edelstan as the ‘star of Inis–Thona,’ and the ‘star of night.’ Towards the end of the third act the voices sing:

Auf flügelschnellster der Stürme,
Gleit’ auf der Woge dahin

Rolle deine krausen Locken
Im Silberschaume der Fluth!

Fahr’ hin auf dem röthesten Strahle des Dampfs,192
Und hole vom Mond mir den Blitz herab!193

In rebellious opposition to these spirits of Ossian are the druids, who refer to the songs of the ghosts as “die verführerischen Gesänge Ossians, des Tonangebers der ganzen harfnenden Bande,”194 and again as “die aufrührerischen Gesänge eines unserer Barden—Ossian hiess der Erzketzer.”195 The druids rely on the spirits of Brumo,196 the god of human sacrifice, and Brumo’s spirits, says the chief druid, “pflegen nicht in dieser weibisch weichen... Ossianssprache... zu reden.”197 Brumo corresponds very closely to Ossian’s Loda, to his ‘terrible spirit of the circle of stones.’ Ossian likewise furnished abundant material for the rites of the druids as they are described in the last act.

In addition to the songs of the ghosts, we have two Bardiete in the drama, one in Act 4, 8, the other in Act 4, 9. Needless to say, Ossian’s influence is plainly discernible. The first begins thus:

Aufdämmernd hinter Wolken schlief
Der junge Morgen im trüberen Roth!...
........
Und warnend thürmte die Wolke sich auf;
Und aus der Wolke brach, verkündigt von Blitz,
Mit tausend Spiessen der Tag hervor.198

In the first edition the ending of the drama was somewhat differently motivated, inasmuch as Äzia, clothed in the armor of a warrior, allows herself to be captured by some of Edelstan’s soldiers and makes an attempt to assassinate Minona, but is foiled in the effort by Ryno. Undoubtedly this motif of the disguise was taken from Ossian, where we find almost a dozen examples of maids taking on the disguise of a youth.199

Many of the geographical and historical notes to the drama are based upon Macpherson, “dessen historische Data noch Niemand angefochten hat.”200 From the notes to the first edition of Minona we can get some idea of Gerstenberg’s opinion of Ossian in the middle of the eighties. He says in note 8: “Auch können wir uns aus dem Ossian, dessen historische Data wenigstens itzt keinen Einwand mehr leiden, wenn gleich die Ächtheit seiner gegenwärtigen epischen und dramatischen Gestalt noch etwaz zweydeutig seyn möchte, ganz vernünftig überzeugen,” etc. And in note 14 he writes: “Es wäre ein gut Theil gewagter gewesen, einer alten Chronik, als der lautern Quelle Ossians nachzuspüren.” Another note (the 10th) gives evidence of the popularity that Ossian still enjoyed as late as 1785: “Was übrigens die ossianische Urkunde von Inisthona betrifft,... so hat sich der Verfasser berechtigt geglaubt, diese Geschichte als aus einem der classischen Werke unsers Jahrhunderts allgemein bekannt vorauszusetzen...” These notes are omitted in the final version of 1815, a fact which leads me to believe that Gerstenberg’s early scruples returned to him late in life. Minona had served to dispel them momentarily, but no doubt the unsatisfactory character of the Report of the Committee of the Highland Society and the aspersions cast upon Macpherson’s translation by Ahlwardt served to reëstablish them in his wavering mind.

§3. Johann Nepomuk Cosmas Michael Denis201

No one did more to increase the knowledge of Ossian in Germany and to enlarge the sphere of his influence there, than did the Jesuit Michael Denis, a native of Bavaria, who took up his residence in Vienna early in life and there spent the remainder of his days. Although himself the author of a considerable number of poetic productions, his contemporary fame was based primarily upon his translation of Ossian, which created a great stir at the time of its appearance, setting all the previous efforts at translation in the shade for good and all. It remained for many years the standard, the classical German translation of the works of Ossian, in spite of the fact that the mold in which it is cast aroused the most violent opposition from many quarters.

Denis had been led to the study of English by his admiration for Klopstock’s Messiah, the prototype of which, Paradise Lost, he was desirous of reading in the original. When he began his translation in 1767, he was well equipped for the task as far as a knowledge of the language is concerned, and the true poetical genius that he lacked was compensated for in large measure by the sincere enthusiasm with which he set about his task. A serious obstacle presented itself at the very outset: there was not a copy of Macpherson’s Ossianic poems to be had in Vienna. Nothing daunted, Denis commenced by translating from Cesarotti’s Italian translation—which had appeared at Padua in 1763 202—a fact that explains the presence of the notes from Cesarotti interspersed throughout his translation. Fortunately he soon obtained a copy of the English original from Prague, whereupon he destroyed all he had so far done and started in afresh. His enthusiasm for the Messiah led to the choice of the hexameter for his translation. Denis was a very rapid worker, a quality that stood him in good stead in the manufacture of the many occasional poems that emanated from his pen. Once on the right track, he worked at his translation with the utmost diligence and persistence and pushed it rapidly to a conclusion, volumes 1 and 2 appearing in 1768, and volume 3 in the following year. The two editions that appeared simultaneously apparently found a ready sale. In the preface to the first volume, Denis confesses what an instantaneous effect the songs of Ossian had upon him. “Kaum hatte ich ein paar Gedichte durchgelesen,” he says, “als ich ihn in meinen Gedanken Homern und Virgiln an die Seite setzte.” And when Ossian received Klopstock’s stamp of approval, Denis was overjoyed. “Wie froh war ich! Ich fieng zu übersetzen an.”203 At the conclusion of the preface he expresses doubts as to the gracious reception of the translation: “Ossian ist viel zu sonderlich,” he thinks, “viel zu unmodern, viel zu unterschieden von denen Dichtern, die man immer in den Händen hat. Allein, wenn man nur einmal mit seinem Geiste bekannter wird, wenn seine Art sich auszudrücken durch ein wiederholtes Lesen ihre Ungewöhnlichkeit verlieret, dann, dächte ich, sollte er nach dem Engländer am ersten bei einem Deutschen sein Glück machen.” It was only a few years later that the real Ossian craze began in Germany, and then Denis was to realize that these unmodern poems with their sentimental coloring appealed even more strongly to the German soul than they did to the English.

Dr. Blair’s arguments were not needed to convince Denis of the authenticity of the poems. He could not accept as spurious poems whose author he had in his first enthusiasm placed by the side of Homer and Vergil, unless irrefutable proof of forgery were given, and this was not forthcoming. And so when Dr. Blair in the appendix to his “Dissertation” in the edition of 1765 undertakes to defend the poems for external reasons also, Denis is led to remark: “Alle diese Gründe dürften für England und Irland, wo vielleicht Scheelsucht und Partheylichkeit Zweifler erwecket haben mag, nöthiger seyn. Einen von Vorurtheilen freyen deutschen Kenner wird immer der innere Gehalt genugsam überzeugen, das[s] Ossians Gedichte nicht unterschoben, sondern wahrhaft alte Gedichte sind.” Denis never took the trouble to institute any original researches or to devote himself to a serious study of this field, but accepted the genuineness of the poems as a matter of course. The unanimity of the German critics allowed no scruples to arise in his mind to vex him.

The reception granted the translation was most flattering indeed, and Denis could not but feel completely satisfied with the result of his labors. Nicolai, e. g., writes from Berlin, as early as Nov. 14, 1769: “Ihre vortreffliche Übersetzung des Ossian, ist auch in unsern Gegenden in den Händen aller Kenner; ich auch habe sie mit grossem Vergnügen gelesen, und sie stets für eins der wichtigsten Neuen Werke gehalten.”204 Gleim sends Denis his ‘poetical trifles,’ “aus Dankbarkeit vornehmlich für das Vergnügen, welches der deutsche Ossian ihm machte.”205 Denis writes in the preface to Vol. 3: “Seitdem der erste Band dieser Uebersetzung in Deutschland bekannt geworden ist, sind mir verschiedene Beweise zugekommen, dass sie dort ganz gut aufgenommen worden sey, wo ich es am meisten wünschte.” The reviews in the Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften, in the Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek, in the Göttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen, and elsewhere, all were extremely gratifying, and only one note of disapproval insisted upon asserting itself, a note that found most emphatic expression in the Erfurtische gelehrte Zeitungen: the form of the translation met with pronounced opposition. The most important of these reviews is that in the Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek. It was written by Herder, who designates the departure as “neu und schön,” and refers to the poems of Ossian as “diese kostbaren Ueberbleibsel aus der alten celtischen oder gallischen Sprache.” But soon doubts arise: “So sind also die Gedichte Ossians in Hexameter übersezt—aber würde Ossian, wenn er in unsrer Sprache sie abgesungen, sie hexametrisch abgesungen haben? oder wenn die Frage zu nah und andringend ist; mag er in seiner Originalsprache den Hexameterbau begünstigt haben?... Oder...: thut Ossian in seinem homerischen Gewande eben die Würkung, als Ossian der Nordische Barde?”206 Here was the rub: Denis had given Ossian, the Gaelic bard, the ‘rough, sublime Scotchman’ in the measure of a Greek rhapsodist. “Vielleicht aber wird er dadurch verschönert, und gleichsam classisch? Er mag es werden: nur er verliert mehr, als er gewinnt, den Bardenton seines Gesangs.”207 The translation makes an epic, a heroic impression, but does not reproduce its natural Scotch heroic impression. Herder proceeds to show how Ossian and Homer are antitheses in almost every respect, and holds that in consequence the difference in expression should be emphasized by the choice of different meters. Although Herder regards many of Denis’s hexameters as melodious and euphonious, he opines that the free meters introduced by Klopstock in his odes are better adapted to a translation of the bard. That the translation made a favorable impression upon Herder in spite of its metrical drawbacks is evidenced by the concluding lines of the review: “Wir freuen uns überhaupt auf die ganze Fortsetzung der Dennisschen Arbeit mehr, als auf manche neuere süsslallende Originale in Deutschland, und wünschen, dass Ossian der Lieblingsdichter junger epischer Genies werde!”208 Herder here had in mind Vol. 1 only; his review of Vols. 2 and 3 did not appear until three years later, in 1772, being written at about the same time as the “Auszug aus einem Briefwechsel über Ossian und die Lieder alter Völker,” which opened the Blätter von Deutscher Art und Kunst.209 His view–point and line of argument are to all intents and purposes identical in the review and the essay. In the review he laments: “Noch immer Ossian der Hexametrist, der Klopstockianer, da man Ossian den kurztönenden, unregelmässigen Celtischen Barden hören sollte.”210 Again and again Herder returns to the attack; he can not reconcile the smooth poetry of Denis with the unpolished bard. The soft lyric cadence of Denis’s verses appeals to Herder, to be sure, but “hier, so sanft, so vieltönig und schön sie sey, hier passet sie Ossianen oft so an, als etwa einen Samojedischen Gesandten bey der russischen Gesetzkommission das Ceremonienkleid des Hofmarschalls.”211 But not alone the hexameters aroused Herder’s dissatisfaction; his displeasure increases when he views Denis’s attempt to translate a poem in the measure employed by Gerstenberg in his Gedicht eines Skalden. Here Denis employs rime with poor success, and we must agree with Herder when he says: “Denis gelingen nicht Reime!”212

There was still another side from which Herder attacked the translation; he was not content with the language employed, which he did not consider natural enough; too many words were not sufficiently indigenous. “War Ossian nicht unser Bruder?” he asks, “und welch’ ein Glück, welch ewiges Verdienst wäre es, ihn so zu verdeutschen, als ob er, ein Deutscher gewesen wäre: das er doch, der Hälfte nach, gewesen ist.”213

I hinted above that Herder was not the only critic who was ill–pleased with Denis’s choice of the hexameter. A similar chord is struck in other reviews, in the introductions to several later translations, and elsewhere.

The most appreciative notice of Denis’s translation was that in the Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften. From beginning to end the review teems with praise for the translator, as well as for old Ossian himself. “Wir haben die Entdeckung der Gedichte Ossians,” begins the critic, “immer für eine der wichtigsten Begebenheiten dieses Jahrhunderts in der Geschichte des Witzes und Geschmacks unsers Jahrhunderts gehalten. Ihre Avthenticität ist nunmehro eben so sehr entschieden, als ihre Vortrefflichkeit.”214 Not only does the critic refrain from discountenancing the employment of the hexameter, but, like the reviewer in the Hamburgischer Correspondent, he even expresses his admiration for the verses. “In der That,” he says, “haben wir kaum wohlklingendere deutsche Hexameter gesehen.”215 In order to bring the value of the poetical translation more vividly before the reader, an extract from Denis’s translation is given 216 and compared with a literal prose translation that follows.217 The value of such long extracts must not be underestimated. They occurred frequently and no doubt aroused an interest in the original in many a reader. As an illustration of the lyrical measure in which Denis translated the distinctively lyrical passages of Ossian, Carril’s song on the death of Crugal is given.218 Besides we have an extract from the beginning of “Comala” and a prose version of the extract for comparison. “Comala” is one of the poems that Denis had clothed in rime, giving it the form of a modern Singspiel, and with this raiment the reviewer is not quite satisfied. Other voices were raised in opposition to the general form Denis had given the dramatic poem. The latter, appreciating the justice of the position of the critics, changed the structure for the edition of 1784,219 but at the same time inserted the poem in its original form in another volume,220 in order to satisfy those who preferred it in that shape. The objection to the first form of “Comala” we find also in the review in the Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen, where the critic writes: “Die Comala deucht uns nicht sehr glücklich ausgefallen zu seyn....Will man sagen: es sey Ossians Comala in ein Singspiel verwandelt, so sind wir zufrieden. Aber Ossian ist es nicht.”221 Otherwise this review of the first volume of Denis’s translation is full of compliments to the genius of the translator. The critic expresses the opinion that the poems of Ossian have gained much by the new form. Especially does the hexameter tend to give “Fingal” the character of a true epic. On the whole, the reviewer is as much impressed with the necessity of the translation on the one hand as with the beauty of the original on the other, “Es kan diese Uebersetzung nach unserm deutschen epischen Originaldichter [Klopstock] billig gesetzet werden, billig einen nahen Platz erhalten; selbst in so fern der alte Barde mit unserm Gefühl, und mit unsern National–Begriffen von den ersten Zeiten weit mehr übereinstimmt, als ein Homer und Virgil.”222

I shall refrain from a detailed discussion of the character of the translation and would refer the reader to Hofmann–Wellenhof’s biography, pp. 163–91. Denis’s was the first translation to give the works of Ossian in full, and attracted attention by reason of that fact alone. He adhered as closely as possible to the original, but from the very nature of the case, he had often to expand.223 Provincialisms abound. It cannot be denied that he failed to reproduce the spirit as given to the original by Macpherson, yet when all is said, Denis’s translation is facile princeps among the complete German translations. The hexameters lend an air of stateliness and dignity to the poems and give them more the air of a classic. What is more, the novel introduction of hexameters evoked a lively discussion and so stimulated the popular interest in Ossian. The translation became a model for the school of the bards, most of whom derived their knowledge primarily from the version of their revered confrère. During Denis’s lifetime, that is, until the opening of the new century, his translation remained the standard for Germany.224 About the time of his death, the so–called Gaelic original began to occupy the chief attention, and when Ahlwardt’s translation from the Gaelic appeared, it superseded that of Denis in the popular favor for a time, that is to say, until it began to be suspected that the Gaelic original was not all that was claimed for it.

The first collection of Denis’s poems, of the songs of Sined, appeared in 1772 under the title of Die Lieder Sineds des Barden. We have not far to go to discover a typical instance of the nature of Ossian’s influence. The very first poem, “An Ossians Geist,” will serve as a splendid example. The poem begins as follows:

Im schweigenden Thale des Mondes
Umkränzet von heiligen Eichen
Da walten die Geister der Barden,

Sie schweben auf Silbergewölken
Den thauigten Abhang herunter,

Dann heben sich Lieder der Vorzeit,
Und Harfen begleiten die Lieder,
Und sanftester Nachhall entzücket
Die lauschenden Wälder und Fluren umher.225

And so on. It is scarcely necessary to point out how closely the Ossianic spirit and nature coloring have been adhered to. The Ossianic paraphernalia are all present, the silent vale,226 the moon, the sacred oaks, the ghosts of the bards, the clouds upon which they float along the sides of the mountains,227 the songs of the times of old attuned to the accompaniment of the harp; not even the echo is missing, resounding from woods and fields. These and similar Ossianic properties are continually resorted to in Denis’s bardic productions. They give an archaic character to the whole, and lend a certain picturesqueness to the scene—when not employed to excess. We have further along “Saiten von Selma,” Ossian’s oft repeated ‘harp of Selma,’ “Zähren der Wehmuth,” “Wipfel der Eichen,” “moosige Trümmer,” etc. Denis proceeds to narrate the principal subjects of the poems of Ossian, and then confesses what an effect Ossian made upon him from the very outset; he tells us how he persisted in his purpose in spite of the fact that many of his old listeners deserted him. He concludes with the following lines:

Und, Vater von Oscar!228 dein Folger
Bey kommenden Altern zu heissen!
Ha! dieser Gedanke gesellt mich
Im schweigenden Thale des Mondes zu dir!229

We should expect Denis, as a strong admirer and pupil of Klopstock, to follow in the footsteps of his master by introducing the old Norse mythology into his bardic efforts. As a matter of fact, however, it is almost completely lacking, a circumstance perhaps best explained by his religious calling.230 About the sole indications of an interest in Old Norse are the seven songs following the first poem. Being translations and paraphrases of Old Norse material, they do not concern us here.

Next come a number of occasional poems addressed to Maria Theresa and to Joseph II. On pages 85–143 we have the “Bardenfeyer am Tage Theresiens,” first published in Vienna in 1770, in which the various offices and qualities of the empress are sung by different bards. The spirit of Klopstock and Ossian hovers over all these poems, as will appear from the extracts to follow. We shall notice also that the bardic machinery and Ossian’s imagery are not neglected. The bards are described as “Die Geber des Ruhmes, die Söhne der Lieder,”231 and are endowed with all the other characteristics of those of Ossian, as, for example, with the power of looking into the future.232

The poem “An Ossians Geist” showed us that Denis adopted the spirit world of Ossian, and like Klopstock and Gerstenberg, he has ghosts appear on all possible occasions, e. g., in “Theresia die Fürstinn,” which begins (p. 89):

Neiget euch nieder aus luftigen Hallen,
Herrscher der Vorzeit im Schmucke Walhallas!
Väter von Habsburg! neiget euch her!233

So in Ossian “the forms of the fathers bend” from their ‘cloudy–hall.’

In the same poem (p. 92) we have a “verfinsterte Seele,” Ossian’s ‘darkened soul.’234

In the next poem, “Theresia die Gattinn,” we have several Ossianic expressions, e. g. (p. 98):

Er zog einher dem Hirschen gleich

In Rabenlocken fiel sein Haar.

We have had occasion before to point out Ossian’s comparisons to a deer, and his locks black as a raven’s wings. Theresa, in true Ossianic manner, is compared to the rainbow, a star, a pine,235 etc., and in the following poem she is said to be fairer than the moon or an oak.236 After the death of her husband she often visits his grave:

“Dort pfleget Sie der Wehmuth Lust,”237

“the joy of grief.” His ghost, of course, does his duty and pays her an occasional visit.238

A truly Ossianic picture and comparison are given in the third stanza of the following poem, “Theresia die Mutter” (p. 103):

  Schön ist an des Himmels
  Blauem Nachtgesichte
    Dünsteloser Mond,
  Wenn er unter Sternen
  Sanftbeleuchtend wandelt;
Aber schöner ist doch Eine noch.

Ossian’s maidens are generally either “bright as the sun–beam,” or else “fair as the moon.” Compare also Ossian’s apostrophe to the moon, beginning of “Dar–Thula.” In another line of the poem (p. 106) we have “Seelen schmelzen” and likewise in “Calthon and Colmal,” p. 183, ll. 21–2: “The soul... melted;” “Temora,” Bk. ii, p. 318, ll. 3–4, etc., etc.

The tenth stanza of “Theresia die Kriegerinn” is decidedly Ossianic:

    Da rollete schnell von Thränen ein Guss
Die bärtigsten Wangen der Männer herab;
    ... da flogen, wie Blitz
      Die wogigten Scheiden empor.239

Compare “Carric–Thura,” p. 149, ll. 35–6: “The tear rolled down her cheek,” etc. The comparison of swords to lightning, to beams of fire, or to meteors occurs again and again in Ossian.240 In the following stanza the rush of the warriors is described (p. 110):

... so stürmet der Wind
Die Blätter des Hayns im Herbste mit sich.

Ossian is very fond of comparing the rush of a host to the wind.241 Bartmar has to sing of battle, and it is not astonishing that we find in his song more traces of Ossian’s influence than in any other song of the “Bardenfeyer,” the general peaceful atmosphere of which does not offer the same possibilities for the insertion of Ossianic material. The ghosts of the fallen warriors make their appearance before the close of the battle. Theresa’s eye makes the warrior bold:

Und furchtbar im Flügel der düsteren Schlacht.
Sie standen, ein Fels, und rollten den Schwall
Der Krieger aus Norden zurück.242

Ossian’s warriors are ‘terrible’ and ‘dark’ in battle, they “stand like a rock”243 and roll back the foe. Compare “Temora,” Bk. ii, p. 318, ll. 17–8: “Conar was a rock before them: broken they rolled on every side;” etc. Another stanza, the twenty–second, shows a close resemblance to an Ossianic image (p. 112):

“Doch wie sich der Lenz in Schauergewölk
Itzt hüllet, und itzo sein holdes Gesicht
Den Fluren entdeckt;”

Compare “Fingal,” Bk. vi, p. 265, ll. 22–4: “Like the sun in a cloud, when he hides his face..., but looks again on the hills of grass!” Furthermore we have in the same poem (p. 113) a “Stein des Ruhmes,”244 Ossian’s “stone of fame”245 or “stone of renown.”246

The following poem, “Theresia die Fromme,” contains but few traces of Ossian’s influence. An expression borrowed directly from Ossian, however, is the “enge Haus,”247 the “narrow house,” the grave, occurring continually in the poems of Ossian, e. g., “Oithona,” p. 173, l. 36, etc., etc. “Theresia die Weise” also contains a direct borrowing from Ossian, viz., Denis calls the echo (p. 128) “die Tochter des Felsen” just as Ossian styles it “the son of the rock.” Another Ossianic reminder is contained in the second stanza of this poem. The bard remarks (p. 126):

Oder, wenn ich den Fall eines der blühenden
Heldensöhne beseufzte,
Dem im Felde sein Hügel stieg.

Ossian’s bards “mourn those who fell”248 and the warrior’s resting–place is marked by a hill or stones.—“Krümmungen heller Bäche” (p. 126) recall Ossian’s “bright winding streams.”249

I have had occasion several times to refer to the transitoriness of the warrior’s life as continually harped upon by Ossian. The soldier’s name is preserved in two ways, as was that of Fingal, i. e., in the song of the bards, and secondly by the stones over his grave. Bearing in mind that Denis translates ‘stones’ by ‘Trümmer,’ note the following lines (p. 131):

Menschen schwinden hinweg. Lassen sie Thaten nach,
Dann nennt Trümmer und Lied Thaten und sie zugleich

Ossianic is the phrase in “Theresia die Gütige” (p. 138):

Bis im Felde keine Spur
Unsrer Pfade mehr
Sichtbar ist.

So Fingal, Bk. v, p. 256, l. 27: “My footsteps [shall] cease to be seen;” etc.

The collection of occasional poems that follows the “Bardenfeyer” is addressed to Joseph II. Bardic properties are employed here in a similar manner as in the poems of the preceding series, but otherwise Ossian’s influence is almost inappreciable. The opening lines (p. 144), beginning “O Geist der Lieder!”250 are truly Ossianic. A comparison borrowed from Ossian is found in “Josephs Erste Reise” (p. 151):

          ... der im Frieden,
        Aehnlich dem Adler am Felsengipfel,
Mit wachem Auge ruhet, und adlerschnell
Auf Störer seiner Ruhe sich niedersenkt.
  Sie bluten, liegen, und der Sieger
     Schwebet zurücke zum Felsengipfel.

And now for a few passages from “Temora.” Bk. ii, p. 319, ll. 32–3: “The eyes of Morven do not sleep. They are watchful, as eagles, on their mossy rocks;” p. 321, ll. 31–3: “Descending like the eagle of heaven,... the son of Trenmor came.” Bk. iii, p. 330, ll. 11–2: “They return..., like eagles to their... rock, after the prey is torn on the field.” Another Ossianic comparison is the following (p. 155): “Die Fürsten stehn, Zwo Sonnen.” See “Temora,” Bk. vi, p. 349, l. 27: “Yet is the king... a sun...,” etc. The “Zweite Reise” contains a stanza that is modeled closely after a passage in Ossian (“Temora,” Bk. ii, p. 323, ll. 11–20):

Die Kinder Teuts... sollten nur

Die Stelle zeichnen, wo sich umarmeten
Die Grössten Deutschlands, Joseph und Friederich,
Hin Eichen pflanzen, dass die spätsten
Enkel im Schatten sich diess erzählten.

In the poem, “Die Säule des Pflügers,” we encounter the following Ossianic reminiscences (p. 166): “In der Seele des Barden ist Licht des Liedes.”251 And (p. 167):

Flügel des Blitzes hatte der hohe Gedanke,
Welcher dem Herrscher die Seele durchfuhr.252

In the same poem we have the Ossianic comparison (p. 168): “Die Seele so still, Wie scheidende Sonnen.”253

The poem “Auf den Oberdruiden an der Rur” and the following ones written in the bardic spirit contain Ossianic touches here and there in much the same way. “An einen Bardenfreund,” contains some verses of Ossianic description (p. 175):

In den Tagen des Herbsts, wenn sich der Abend bräunt,
Irr’ ich einsam den Hayn, irr’ ich die Fluren durch,

Ja, dann seyd ihr vor mir, Wälder mit seufzenden
Tannen! bist du vor mir, sprudelnder Erlenbach!
Und ihr Teiche voll Schilfes!
Von dem kühlenden West’ umrauscht.

The autumn, the darkening evening, the lonely wanderer in the grove and on the heath, the sighing pines, “the breeze in the reeds of the lake,”254 combine to form an ideal Ossianic picture. More of the same kind is found in the poem.—“Der Strahl aus Osten” referring to the sun, as employed in the next poem, “Auf das Haupt der Starken bei den Markmännern” (p. 180) is undoubtedly Ossian’s “beam of the east.”255

In a poem addressed to Gleim, “Auf den Bardenführer der Brennenheere,” Denis refers to his translation of Ossian and to the favorable reception accorded it by Gleim (p. 186):

Ossians erhabne
Lieder nachzustimmen
Rang es,256 und errang mir einen Gleim.

On pp. 189–90 we read:

  Aber du, Gespielinn
  Meiner Lieder, Harfe!
    Theuer bist du mir,
  Seit du mir mit Morvens
  Neugeweckten Klängen
Dieses Mannes Herz gewonnen hast.

“An Friedrichs Barden” (Ramler) breathes the bardic spirit more intensely than some of the others we have been considering. When Denis calls ‘Thaten’ ‘Flammen’ (p. 191), we recall Ossian’s “Our deeds are streams of light.”257 Denis’s druids dwell in caves, as they do in Ossian. “Druiden locket er hervor Aus ihrer Höhle,” he sings (p. 195) in “An den Oberbarden der Pleisse” (Weisse) and so Ossian addresses the druid as the “dweller of the rock.”258

The next song is addressed “An den Beredtesten der Donaudruiden” (Ignaz Wurz). The word ‘schwellen’ in the expression “Thränen Schwellen in... Augen” (p. 199) no doubt goes back to Ossian; compare “Dar–Thula,” p. 286, l. 17: “Tears swell in her... eyes!” Denis uses the word frequently in other connections.259

Kretschmann’s poem, “Rhingulphs Lied an Sined,” which follows, is answered by Denis in “Sineds Gesicht, Rhingulphen dem Freunde der Geister gewidmet,” a poem teeming with Ossianic properties, the ghosts playing an especially prominent part. Intensely Ossianic is the following comparison (p. 207):

Und meine Freude......
War, wie des Mondes Antlitz, wenn ein Dunst
Sich von der Erde schwingend es beschleicht.260

The ghost tells Denis that Rhingulph (p. 209):

... nannte dich den Freund an Ossians Busen,
Dem Ossian am Abend seiner Augen
Die Harfe liess.—

In a note to “Sineds Gesicht,” Denis quotes Kretschmann’s reply, in which the latter addresses him as “Sined, treuster Freund von Fingals Sohne!” and exclaims: “Hätt’ ich Ullins Lieder, böth ich dir sie an.”261—The succeeding poem, “An einen Jüngling,” enjoins a youth to conduct himself so that his fame may go down in the songs of the bards, that darkness may not dwell around his grave, that his name may not die like the thunder echoed by the hills, and gives him much similar advice such as Ossian was accustomed to extend to his Celtic heroes.

“Sineds Vaterlandslieder,” a series of four poems, contain the never–failing Ossianic paraphernalia as before. The bard sings in a grove, reclining upon moss in the shade of an oak, with the breeze trembling through the leaves and sighing in the harp.262 In the opening line of the next poem, “Sineds Morgenlied,” the poet calls upon the harp to descend (p. 232): “Harfe! steig nieder.” Compare “Urlaub von der sichtbaren Welt” (p. 283):

Steig nieder, Schattenharfe!
Vom wiegenden Zweige der Tanne!

The ‘Schattenharfe’263 is Ossian’s ‘shadowy harp,’ “Temora,” Bk. vii, p. 361, l. 4, and in “Temora,” Bk. v, p. 340, l. 2, we read: “Descend from thy place, O harp.” The harp may hang on a branch, as in “Berrathon,” p. 380, l. 31.264—“Das Donnerwetter” contains occasional Ossianic nature touches. This poem is followed by six laments, “Sineds Klagen,” in which the grief now and again takes an Ossianic tone, as witness the opening verses of the first, an elegy on Gellert’s death (p. 253):

  Schauerndes Lüftchen! woher?
Trüb ist der Tag. In dem entblätterten Hayne
........
  ... sitz’ ich einsam
  Auf mein Saitenspiel gelehnet,
Da kömmst du, Lüftchen! schwirrest mir
So kläglich, so kläglich die Saiten hindurch.265

Ossianic also is the tone of the opening lines of the second complaint, sung on a cloudy autumn day (p. 258):

Traurig ist der Tag!
Von der Himmelstochter
Blicken ungetröstet
Dämmert er dahin.
Graue Nebelsäulen
Steigen von Gebirgen.

Ossian calls the sun “the son of heaven,” not the “daughter,” but Denis made similar changes of this nature, e. g., in the opening line of “Dar–Thula” and elsewhere he translates “daughter of heaven,” referring to the moon, by “Sohn der Nacht.”266 Denis adds a note to his translation in “Dar–Thula,” explaining that he took the liberty to institute the change, because moon in German, forsooth, is of the masculine gender.267 And thus we arrive at ‘Himmelstochter.’ Compare furthermore “Carric–Thura,” p. 152, ll. 12–3: “Grey mist rests on the hills,” and the like; also the oft repeated ‘columns’ and ‘pillars’ of mist.—In the same complaint the line (p. 259): “Ein Seufzer reisst sich aus der Brust”268 recalls Ossian’s “The sigh bursts from their breasts.”269 In this poem Denis laments the taste of those to whom Witz is everything. He can not follow in their footsteps, because (p. 261):

Greis Ossian in dem Geleite
Der Barden und Skalden besucht ihn.
Er höret am schweigenden Monde
Gesänge vergangener Alter.

The fourth complaint is an elegy on the death of Joh. v. Nep. Hohenwart, a friend of Denis, whose ghost is asked to appear.—The concluding stanza of the fifth contains an Ossianic comparison (p. 276): “Sein Leben bleibt... ein Strom von ewighellem Lichte.” Compare “Temora,” Bk. i, p. 311, ll. 22–3: “My life shall be one stream of light.” Several Ossianic touches in the last poem of the collection, “Urlaub von der sichtbaren Welt,” have been referred to. Ossianic furthermore is the following picture (p. 284):

Kühle Lüfte säuseln,
Wiesenquellen lauten,
Durch die Tannenzacken
Blinkt der milde Mond;
Aber schweigend, schweigend steht der Hügel,
Der den Barden deckt.

‘Silent’ as a standing epithet frequently goes with ‘hill’ in Ossian, and the hill covering the dead has been noticed; we have it again on pp. 287–8.

Having now considered the poems of the first collection, we are ready to turn our attention to the new offspring of Denis’s muse that found a place in the first edition of Ossians und Sineds Lieder (1784), the first three volumes of which contain the translation of Ossian, revised with reference to the English edition of 1773.270 Aside from the alterations necessitated by the conformity to the new English edition and the working over of “Comala” referred to above (p. 124), the changes are inconsiderable. The fragment of a Norse poem, “Fithona,” given by Macpherson in the preface to the edition of 1773, is translated and inserted among the songs of Sined, Vol. 4, pp. 98–100.—In his preface “An den Leser” in the first volume, Denis defends his choice of the hexameter in a few words and states: “Er [Denis] glaubt noch Ossians Aechtheit, obwohl er sich, als ein Zeitgenoss des XVIII. Jahrhundertes freuen müsste, wenn dieses Jahrhundert einen solchen Genius hervorgebracht hätte.” He is strengthened in his belief by the statement made by Sturz that he (Sturz) had seen the originals.271 The preface contains also a chronological bibliography of Ossianic publications from 1762 to 1783, which is by no means complete and contains several errors. The Fragments of 1760 are not mentioned at all. The songs of the five bards given by Macpherson in his note to “Croma” are translated and placed at the end of the third volume under the title “Die Octobernacht. Eine alte Nachahmung Ossians.”

I shall point out the most striking Ossianic characteristics in the poems that have not yet been dwelt upon. The poem “An Gott,” the first in the list,272 contains nothing deserving of attention. In “Sined und der Tag seiner Geburt” (pp. 113–5), we have the hill covering the dead, the grove of oaks, druids, ghosts, etc. Towards the end Denis addresses his father:

  Hättest du Lieder von Selma gehört,
Hättest du Sined gesehn im Kreise der Barden, dein Antlitz
  Hätte von inniger Wonne geglänzt!—
Aber hängst du denn nicht...
  Itzo den thauenden Himmel herab? etc.

In “Der Fremde und Heimische,” the stranger asks whether the native has ever heard of Denis (p. 131):

Du kennst den Sänger nicht, der Ossians
Gepriesen Lied, das einst in Morven klang,
Den Kindern seines Volks ins Harfenspiel
Zu singen unternahm?

Next we have a series of five poems, “Sineds Träume,” in which we shall find occasional traces of Ossian’s influence, particularly in the second dream.

A typical bardic song is “Der Neugeweihte und Sined,” which contains several passages worthy of note. In the one beginning (p. 164):

... Als sich Fingals Sohn
Auf seinem leichten Nebel einst in Nacht
Zum Ohre meiner Ruhe niederliess,

Denis speaks of the reception of his Ossianic imitation. The following comparison at the end of the passage (p. 164) is Ossianic: “Und steht so fest Dem Tadel, wie den Wogen Morvens Fels.”—“Das Kunstfeuer” contains a reference (p. 207) to an episode in the songs of Ossian, viz., Fingal’s encounter with Swaran, “Cath–Loda,” Duan i:

... Ist es Uthornas Nacht
Beschwert mit Himmelszeichen, als Lodas Geist
Aus seiner Wolkenburg nach Fingal
Glühende Schrecken umsonst versandte?—

In “Der Jugendgefährte” Denis’s lament (p. 216) sounds truly Ossianic:

Jüngling! Sined ist todt. Von seiner verlassenen Halle
Tönet kein freundlicher Laut,
Leitet kein Fusstritt in Schatten. Ihm haben die Söhne der Lieder
Traurig sein Grabmaal erhöht.

Ossianic touches also occur in the poems that have been added to the fifth volume. In the “Fünfte Reise” Denis speaks of bad advice disappearing “gleich dem Nebel” (p. 89); Ossian has frequent comparisons to the departure of mist. The first line (p. 91) of the “Sechste Reise” is typical: “Das Grau der Vorzeit hellt sich dem Barden auf.” “Der Zwist der Fürsten,” a series of three poems, contains several things of interest. In the first song we have Ossian’s striking on the shield as a sign of battle (p. 111). In the second Joseph’s shield is said to be “gleich dem Monde Mitten in Gewittern” (p. 113). Compare “Temora,” Bk. i, p. 306, ll. 4–5: “His shield is... like the... moon ascending through a storm,” and numerous other comparisons of a shield to the moon.—The lines (p. 117):

Die schauernde Gegend erglänzte
Von Waffen, wie feurige Flut.

recall “Fingal,” Bk. iv, ll. 2–3: “The heath flamed wide with their arms.” Ossianic in “Wiens Befreyung” (p. 124) is “Die Wolke des Tods,” “the cloud of death.”273—The line (p. 132): “Dein Rath ist Licht, und Flamme dein Muth,” reminds us of “Fingal,” Bk. ii, p. 228, l. 12: “Thy counsel is the sun,” and “Temora,” Bk. iv, p. 338, l. 23: “Valour, like a... flame.”—Ossian calls the dew the “drops of heaven,”274 and so Denis in “Der Blumenstrauss” (p. 157) “des Himmels Tropfen.”

The sixth volume, the Nachlese zu Sineds Liedern compiled and edited by Joseph von Retzer, contains but little that demands our attention. It includes several religious songs, a few translations, and a number of occasional poems. Some of the poems were written prior to Denis’s acquaintance with Ossian, and these of course do not concern us here, but even the bardic songs contain little that is Ossianic, only now and then do we meet with a trace of the bard’s influence, as e. g., in “Der Heldentempel Oesterreichs” (p. 54): “Aus jeder Brust gedrängte Seufzer steigen,” reminding us of Ossian’s “The crowded sighs of his bosom rose.”275

The edition of 1791–2 is virtually identical with that of 1784. Testimony to the high rank the poems of Ossian still occupied in the minds of the German people is given in the preface, where we read: “Auch nur ein Wort von dem Werthe der Werke,... zu sagen, wäre von mir eine unverzeihliche Kühnheit. Ossians Gesänge haben das Alter äherner Denkmaale überlebt,...”

A cursory perusal of the facts collected above will at once lead us to the conclusion that Ossian meant much more to Denis than he did either to Klopstock or to Gerstenberg. When we consider the fact that Denis became wholly saturated with Ossian while working on his well–known translation, we no longer marvel at the circumstance that the characteristics of Ossian took such firm hold of him in the composition of his own songs. Again, it requires but a glance to see that at no time was Ossian’s influence stronger than during the years in which the translation was under way and those immediately following, that is, the influence is more noticeable in the poems contained in the edition of 1772 than in those written between 1772 and 1784. While the majority of his productions are of a mediocre character, they nevertheless furnish an extremely interesting picture of the extent to which the imitation of the old bard could be carried. And when we compare his original poems with his translation—instead of with Macpherson’s original—the similarity will appear even more pronounced. As Klopstock later on turned to the Revolution, as Gerstenberg found solace in the study of Kant, so Denis later in life became engrossed in bibliographical labors, and his Ossianic poetry fell into neglect.

§4. Karl Friedrich Kretschmann276

In the same year that the first two volumes of Denis’s translation made their appearance and created such a stir in the literary world of Germany, another prominent example of bardic literature loomed up in a different quarter, “Der Gesang Rhingulphs des Barden als Varus geschlagen war,” which was published in the autumn of 1768, although the title–page bears the date 1769. This is the first instance we have of the employment of a bardic pseudonym. Kretschmann tells us that he received his impulse through Gerstenberg, whose “Gedicht eines Skalden” had appeared two years previously, and we can easily see that the form and conception of Kretschmann’s song are borrowed from Gerstenberg’s poem. The “Gesang” was followed in 1771 by “Rhingulphs Klage,” which served to establish firmly the contemporary fame the “Gesang” had gained for its author. In both of these poems the influence of Klopstock goes hand in hand with that of Ossian, just as is the case in so much of Denis’s poetry. But while Denis’s original poetic efforts were confined almost exclusively to vers d’ occasion, Kretschmann tried his hand not only at bardic and lyric poetry, but also at epigrams, fables, allegories, and even dramas and tales. The bardic fever thus forms a mere episode in Kretschmann’s poetic activity, and, although stray pieces in the bardic vein appear later, the influence of Ossian did not last much beyond the middle of the seventies. As it was, Kretschmann borrowed fewer poetic motifs and expressions from Ossian than Denis did and, on the whole, was influenced less by him. He was extremely sensitive to the opposition that the Bardengebrüll evoked, and he turned his attention into other channels just about the time that Denis began to devote most of his time to bibliographical researches.

Kretschmann’s epigrams, fables, dramas and tales do not, of course, concern us here, nor do the hymns, in which Klopstock’s influence predominates, and, although in his lyric poetry Gleim’s influence reigns supreme, the latter’s anacreontic tone occasionally appears side by side with Ossianic machinery and Klopstockian grandeur. We have, therefore, in addition to the bardic songs to consider mainly his lyric productions.277 Most of that portion of Kretschmann’s work in which the influence of Ossian is traceable is contained in the first volume of his collected writings. The poetical productions in the volumes are preceded by a sketch “Ueber das Bardiet.” It goes without saying, that Kretschmann was a firm believer in the authenticity of the poems of Ossian, and his admiration for the Celtic bard is apparent, when, in the strife over the priority of the bardic work of Klopstock, Gerstenberg, and himself, he takes the stand that “Vater Ossian war doch eher, denn wir alle!”278 His theories as to the characteristics of the old Germanic bardic songs are based largely upon Ossian. “Vater Ossian, ein Kelte so gut als die Barden Germaniens,” he says, “überzeugt uns, dass dieses wirklich der Charakter der teutschen Bardenlieder gewesen seyn müsse.”279 Ossian’s great success he attributes largely to the combination of the epic and lyric elements in his poems. Of course the venerable Ossianic fragments must be regarded as the great models of the new Bardiet. While he opposes the hexameter as the form in which the Bardiet shall be cast, yet, because of the beauty of the verse–structure, he cannot condemn Denis’s translation. Of Ossian’s fame in the days that are to come he is assured.280

The first poetic production in the volume is “Der Gesang Rhingulphs,” to some of the Ossianic touches in which attention will be called. Norse mythology is introduced in the song, but not to the same extent as in Gerstenberg’s or Klopstock’s synchronous work along similar lines. The bardic paraphernalia, the moon, the grove, the oak, the echo, the harp, and so forth, meet us here as they do in Denis, and it will not be necessary to point them out. Laying aside these bardic properties, there really is little in the song that can be traced directly back to Ossian. In the first four cantos as well as in “Rhingulphs Klage” and other poems of Kretschmann, we meet with the form Tohro for Thor.281 Scheel is no doubt correct in attributing this odd form to the frequency of names in –o found in Saxo Grammaticus and to the fondness of Ossian for similar forms,282 e. g., Aldo, Artho, Branno, Brumo, etc., etc.

A real bardic scene is presented in the following lines of the first song (p. 51):

Der mächtge Wohlklang füllte den Hain,
Da brausten die Eichen,
Da rauschten die Tannen
Holdselig darein.

And in the same song we have the “Geist der Lieder” (p. 56)283 as well as a typical Ossianic ghost (p. 55). In the second canto we read (p. 62):

Frisch wie der Eichenbaum,
Wächst Teutschlands Jugend auf.

Compare “Carric–Thura,” p. 152, l. 20: “Thy family grew like an oak.”—In this song we have two Ossianic pictures, the one (p. 64):

Auf einmal tritt....
Die Sonn’ empor, und vorger Nacht
Lezte graue Nebel fliehen.

And the other (p. 72):

... in den Lüften flog der Sturm,
Und Sausen war im alten Haine.

The echo makes its appearance in the second canto (p. 72): “Und Fels und Wald erklang,” in the third (p. 79), the fourth (p. 107), and elsewhere.284 I do not wish to imply that the author thought of Ossian each time he employed the echo, but there can be no doubt of the fact that Ossian is in large measure responsible for the fondness which the bardic poets had for the echo.285 “Die mosigte Höle” (p. 72) goes back to Ossian’s mossy cave.286 In the fourth canto we come to the battle proper and here Ossianic imagery is not lacking, e. g., the lines (p. 96):

Dort, wo der kühnsten Krieger Mengen
Sich wie Gewitterwolken drängen?—
Dort wird der Führer Varus stehn!

suggest Ossian’s “Their heroes follow, like the gathering of the rainy clouds;”287 “Like the clouds, that gather to a tempest...! so met the sons of the desert round... Fingal;”288 etc. Further along we have (p. 97): “Sein Schwert... strahlt wie Blitz.”289 When we read of warriors being hewn down like thistles by the mower (p. 100), we are reminded of the passage in “Fingal,” Bk. ii, p. 231, ll. 12–3: “Cuthullin cut off heroes like thistles.”—The fifth song opens with a comparison in the Ossianic vein (p. 111):

Wie wenn der lezte Wintersturm
Noch eine Nacht mit Sausen,
Mit Schnee und Hagel, fürchterlich
Durchwütete; dann schnell entwich,
Auf fernem Gebürge zu brausen:
Der erste göldne Frühlingstag,
Der lauschend hinter Wolken lag,
Steigt freundlich nun hernieder;

So weicht von uns des Krieges Wuth.

The comparison of wrath to a storm is not foreign to Ossian,290 and the entire passage bears a resemblance to a paragraph in “The Songs of Selma.”291 In the same song we have druids (p. 115) and the thistle again (p. 117),[292] also the compound “Schild–Zerbrecher” (p. 118), which is Ossian’s “breaker of the shields.”293

The next poem to be considered is “Die Klage Rhingulphs des Barden,” which is divided into four cantos and shows Ossian’s influence in much the same way as the “Gesang.” Ghosts are introduced at the very beginning (p. 131). Both Ossian and Klopstock no doubt are represented in the lines (p. 132):

Wie der Wasserfall brausend die Kluft durchflieht,
Wälze dich wild über Felsenherzen mein Lied!—294

The lines (p. 133):

In Rauch zerdampft des Helden
Lichtheller Ruhm vor dir.

recall Ossian’s “fame, that fled like the mist.”295 The following comparison is Ossianic (p. 134):

Denn er fiel, er fiel,

So reisst im Haine Teutebergs
Des Sturmes Fluth die Eiche hin.296

Ossian’s frequent “melting of the soul” may be responsible for (p. 137):

Und ihre Seele schmolz
In... Minnegesang.

Compare “Croma,” p. 178, ll. 14–5: “Thy song is lovely!... but it melts the soul.”—Thusnelda sheds ‘tears of joy’ and embraces her father with “schneebeschämenden” (p. 139) arms. He strikes the shield (p. 141) to summon warriors, and Hermann feels “Die sanfte Wehmuth” (p. 147).—In the second canto we notice the following (p. 155):

So wie die Feuersbrunst...
Entflammt sich oft dein Grimm...
Verzehrt die Zellter...

‘Burning’ or ‘flaming wrath’ occurs frequently in Ossian, where rage is also occasionally compared to a fire. Notice also “They were consumed in the flames of thy wrath,”297 “His rage was a fire that always burned,”298 etc. Ossianic are the tone and atmosphere in the following passage (p. 159):

Ich schlich in Wald
Bey Sternen Schimmer;
Warf mich aufs Moos
Der Felsentrümmer:

In hohen dicken Wipfeln brausten
Die Geister luftger Nacht:

Und siehe, mir war,
Als stünd’ ein Mann am Stamme
Der alten Eiche hingelehnet,
Mit wildflatterndem Haar.

and again (p. 161):

Da sauste von Wacholderhügeln
Ein rascher Wind ihm in das Haar;
Ich merkte, dass auf seinen Flügeln
Der Geist des Römers war.

The “Strahl von seinem Ruhme” (p. 173) in the third canto recalls Ossian’s “beam of fame.”299—Ossian’s warriors continually lean on their shields, and Kretschmann may have had this in mind when he wrote the line (p. 179): “Siegmund stand, gelehnt auf seinen Schild.” Certain it is that the comparisons in the line (p. 179) “Dein Schild der Mond, dein Schwert der Blitz”300 are Ossianic.—In the fourth canto the stanza beginning (p. 196): “Ich lag, und schlief so süss” is decidedly Ossianic. As he slept ‘grey ghosts arose’ (p. 197):

Der falbe Nebel dämmerte licht:
Und mitten in wirbelnden Schimmern
Erblickt’ ich ein Gesicht.

It is the face of Irmgard, of which he says (p. 197): “Der Vollmond scheint so lieblich nicht!” Ossian also compares the face to a moon and speaks of a maiden “fair as the full moon.”301 The spirit departs in good Ossianic style (p. 200):

... da verschwand der Geist,
Wie der Nebel am Teiche zerfleusst
Wenn der Morgenwind erwacht.302

A typical Ossianic picture is the following (p. 206), in which the form of comparison also savors of Ossian:

So wie die alte Eiche,
An allen Zweigen entlaubt,
Hoch auf dem waldigten Berge trauert;
Der sinkende Nebel verhüllt ihr Haupt:
So sass, umringt von finsterm Harme,
Ingwiomar, der greise Mann.

Likewise in Ossian we have an oak “clothed in mist”303 and the comparison of a warrior to a “leafless oak.”304 Compare also: “But now he is pale and withered like the oak.”305 Ossian again and again arranges comparisons in exactly the manner we have here, i. e., the first member is followed by an independent sentence in the indicative mode. Take, e. g., such a passage as the following: “As rushes a stream of foam from the dark shady deep of Cromla... Through the breaches of the tempest look forth the dim faces of ghosts. So fierce,” etc.306 Likewise Ossianic is this scene (pp. 207–8):

... Wenn der Sturm der Nacht
Mit allen seinen Winden erwacht,
Die schwarze schlosende Wolke saust,
Der Wald mit allen Zweigen braust,
Der Donner brüllt, die Haide brüllt,
Das wilde Wasser rauschend schwillt,
Ueber die Felsen ins Thal sich giest, etc.,

as are also the following comparisons (p. 210):

Da fuhr hastig, mit blankem Schwert
Der Held hervor.....
........ so fährt
Der schnelle Blitz....
Herab aus finstern Gewittern.—
Von der Linken zur Rechten flog
Sein Schwert einen flammenden Kreis; da bog
Der Schwarm zurück, und Herman stand
Wie durchs Gewitter der Mond sich wand:
Einsamglänzend gebietet er.

Compare such expressions as “Ryno as lightning gleamed along,”307 “brightened, like the full moon of heaven; when the clouds vanish away,”308 “risen... from battle, like a meteor from a stormy cloud,”309 and the like.—The poem that follows, “Die Jägerin,” includes anacreontic as well as bardic elements, without containing anything specifically Ossianic. It has the ‘grove of oaks’ (p. 224), the ‘snowy breast’ (p. 232), the ‘Geist der Lieder’ (p. 229), the unavoidable echo (p. 227), and other bardic phrases that had by this time become quite common.

The last poem of the first volume is “Kleist,” in three cantos, which cannot be said to have been strongly influenced by Ossian, although the same old bardic paraphernalia of harps and spirits and the like are employed and occasional Ossianic reminders occur e. g., the expression (p. 259): “Ihrer Waffen Schein War furchtbar,” reminds us of Ossian’s “Terrible was the gleam of the steel,”310 etc. We must again point out that although similar expressions occur also in Homer and elsewhere, Ossian served to intensify the impression. Kretschmann and most of the other bardic poets certainly knew their Ossian better than they did their Homer, and I think we can give Ossian the benefit of the doubt in most instances.—The figure of the stars trembling: “Da bebten die Sterne” (p. 259), also probably goes back to Ossian, as does the line “Thauvoll war sein Haar” (p. 259), with which compare, e. g., “Filled with dew are my locks.”311

In the second volume of Kretschmann’s works, which contains “Hymnen,” “Scherzhafte Lieder,” “Sinngedichte,” and a few other poems, there are but scattered signs of Ossian’s influence scarcely worthy of mention. Only in the “Anhang einiger kleinen Bardenlieder” do we find the bardic tendency more strongly pronounced and in consequence more frequent traces of Ossian. In the first of these bardic poems, “Die teutsche Schamhaftigkeit,” we have a “Mädchen, rabenschwarz von Haaren,”312 but the comparison was a common one by this time and need not be referred to Ossian. In the one “An den ersten Weinstock” we have the echo once more (p. 230); likewise in “Das Traumgesicht” (p. 236). In the “Frühlingslied” the nightingale is called the bardic bird, “Du Bardenvogel Nachtigall” (p. 232), the expression no doubt going back to Klopstock’s Bardale.313 In the same poem the bard lies on the moss in the cave of the rock (pp. 232–3), and we have the following Ossianic lines (p. 233):

Nur selten blinkte durch die Nebeldecken
Der späten Sonne Blick.

Compare Ossian’s “the sun looks through mist.”314 In the last poem of the Anhang, “Das Traumgesicht,” the bardic character stands out more prominently than in any of the preceding ones. The very first line gives us “Zukunftspähende Druiden” (p. 236), and soon the ghost of the dreamer’s father hovers from the dark oaks (p. 237).—In all these bardic songs Gleim’s influence is distinctly noticeable. In the second stanza of the “Friedenslied” (p. 147), we have “tiefgestimmte Saiten,” whereas the original version in the Leipziger Musen Almanach for 1780 (p. 40) had “Distelumkränzte Saiten.”

Volumes 3 and 4 of the works contain comedies. In the fifth volume we have first some “Vermischte Gedichte und Fragmente,” one of which is addressed to Denis: “An Sined den Harfen–Druiden.” It is written in the bardic spirit with here and there an Ossianic touch. At the beginning we have an imitation of the Ossianic mood of forsakenness and wildness.315 The spirit of song again appears 316 and also the echo (p. 14). The poet hears the call of the harp, he follows the sound, until he sees “den Sänger am Eichenbaum” (p. 14).—On pp. 15–6 we read:

Und nun kenn’ ich dich, Sined,
Den Freund an Ossians Busen,
Dem er am Abend
Seiner Augen die Harfe liess.

Aber ach, kenn’ ich denn nicht,
Sined, Ossians Harfe,
Die vom Rauschen der Speere,
Vom Säuseln der Schwerter gern begleitet wird?

Another bardic song is that “An Telynhardt,”317 addressed to Hartmann,318 and containing the lines (p. 50):

Dann tritt... unter die Bardenschaar,
..........
Da wirst du zittern, so wie Rhingulph
Zitterte, wenn er zu Ossian hintrat.

The following poem “An den Herrn B. von F. * * *” sets up Ossian as a model and ends with the exclamation (p. 53):

O dringe fürder bis zum Ziele,
Und komm’ als Ossian zurück!

The following passage is worthy of note (p. 52):

Als Ossian, in Deiner Blüte,
Der süssen Harfe schwur;
Da harrt’ er oft am heissen Tage,
In kalten Nächten, auf der Flur;
Und sucht’ und fand Natur und Wahrheit,
Bis ihn der ehrenvolle Zweig umlaubt,
Den ihm nicht Helle’s Barde,
Der Barde Roms nicht raubt.

We see from the above lines that Kretschmann also was not inclined to set Ossian below Homer or Vergil, and that it was Ossian’s naturalness that appealed to him, his freedom from rules and conventions.319

The remainder of the fifth volume does not offer anything for our purpose. The sixth and last volume, which was not published until 1799, is made up of “Fabeln,” and of “Lyrische, Vermischte und Epigrammatische Nachlesen.” In these later poems no traces of Ossian’s influence are discernible, except in the cycle of the Seasons, where we encounter an Ossianic description now and then, although no distinct imitation is traceable.

I believe that the examples given have borne out the statement made in the introduction. Kretschmann was really never saturated with Ossian as Denis was. That he admired the Gaelic bard, he does not hesitate to admit, but aside from his fondness for the poems that were in everybody’s mouth in his day, he felt no scientific curiosity to enter more deeply into the question of their authenticity. The fact that Klopstock and Herder regarded the poems as genuine, satisfied him completely. And when the bardic ghost stalked through the land, he willingly paid his tribute—wrote a number of bardic songs—and then retired on his laurels to seek new fields of poetical activity distinctly hostile to a continuation of Ossianic influence. Even his later lyric poems, where we might look for lingering tokens of its presence, reveal nothing of the sort. The bard and the grove and the oak of course still make their bow upon occasion, but these were so firmly engrafted in the lyric poetry of Germany by this time, that Ossian can no longer be called to account for each individual occurrence. More of this when we reach the Göttinger Hain.

§5. Minor Bards

The paragraphs on Denis and Kretschmann have amply demonstrated just how the so–called bards were dependent upon Ossian. There is little difference between the bardic work of these two and that of the remaining bards, the names of many of whom have been consigned to oblivion, and it would serve little purpose to take up the entire work of each separately. I shall therefore content myself with pointing out some of the more striking Ossianic characteristics in a number of selections of bardic poetry taken at random.

Lorenz Leopold Haschka (1749–1827), in whose lyric poetry the influence of Klopstock and Denis is visible, has a bardic poem in the Litterarische Monate,320 “Cronnan und Minona 321 an Annas Hügel” (pp. 8–14), the very title of which proclaims Ossian’s presence. The first two names are taken from “Carric–Thura.” The hill we have encountered before, and in the poem we even have the four stones at the corners of the grave.322 Then we read (pp. 11–2):

Horch’ auf! Da winselts das Farrenkraut
Kläglich hindurch, wie Sterbelaut
Auf Harfen!—Annas Seelchen ists, Minona!
Sie wünschet die Stimme des Lobes zu hören!

The sound emitted by the harp to herald a person’s approaching death,323 the desire of the ghost to hear the voice of fame are both taken from Ossian. Then we have ‘Disteln’ (p. 10) and a “Tochter der Schattenharfe” (p. 12), Ossian’s shadowy harp again.324 Anna’s ghost hovers over Tonthena (p. 13), the star mentioned several times in Ossian.325

In the same magazine we have several other bardic songs by Haschka. In the one “Bei Annas von Gluck Hügel,” we have the echo called the “Sohn des Felsen” (p. 14) as in Ossian;326 likewise in “Auf Elisabeth von H.” (p. 307) the echo is the “Bergsohn.”—“An den Gespielen meiner Harfe” contains the image of the youth standing tall “der luftigsten Eiche gleich” (p. 18), with which compare “He stands tall,... as an oak.”327 After his death, the youth lies “unter den graulichten Vier Steinen” (p. 19), Ossian’s “four grey stones.”328 Note also the following (p. 19):

Wenn ich dann, gleich der Blume, verwelkt bin
Und, ihren Blättern ähnlich, mein dürr Gebein
  Zerstreut liegt,...
  ......
Dann komm zu meinem blumichten Hügel her
Mit allen deinen Liedern, und gieb, mein Freund,
  Dem Winde meinen Geist, und meine
    Harfe dem niedrigsten Espenzweige.

As for the first stanza, see supra, pp. 93–4. When we strike an imitator of one of the leading bards, the chances of a direct influence on the part of Ossian are naturally lessened. More than likely Haschka was in this instance indebted to Klopstock more than to Ossian directly, or to Homer or the Bible, for that matter. The situation in the second stanza is thoroughly Ossianic and calls for no further comment.

In “Die Kraft der Tonkunst” we encounter the bardic machinery again as well as Ossianic rhetorical figures. The moon, e. g., is called the “Nachtschild” (p. 210). Then we have the ‘sending round the shell’ (p. 212),[329] “der Wehmut... Wonne” (p. 215),[330] and the following noteworthy passage (p. 215):

Schwindend itzt, wie Lonas Stimme
  Einst im Widerhalle starb,
Da waldeinwärts Jäger riefen:
  Ossian! Der Felsen Sohn
    Heischer widerseufzt’:

Ossian!

In the poem “Auf Elizabeth von H.,” Elizabeth is said to resemble the morning–sun (p. 307). In the same poem we have the ‘snow of the bosom’ (p. 308) and in the “Geburtslied” the ‘hand of snow’ (p. 310).331

In Karl Mastalier’s (1731–95) “Ode auf den Freyherrn von Laudon,” we have Ossian’s ‘trembling harp’ several times.332 “Das Nationaltheater” shows traces of Ossian’s influence in the bardic paraphernalia and the imagery. The moon is termed the ‘daughter of the silent night.’333 On the whole, Mastalier’s poems were but little influenced by Ossian, and there is nothing that distinguishes his poetry particularly from the usual run of bardic productions.

Knorr’s 334 “Der Barde an seinen Freund K * * *,” which appeared in the Leipziger Musenalmanach for 1776, is written in the Ossianic vein. The bard sits by the grey oak and asks the breeze to lift his black locks. “Wie Sänger Ossian Hebt er sich vom heiligen Eichbaum,” we read on p. 95.

In the same number of the almanac we have a bardic song by Brown, entitled “Die Nacht,” in which we find Ossianic description and Norse mythology side by side. In the opening lines of the poem, the Ossianic Stimmung is imitated to prepare for the appearance of the ghost.335 A few quotations from the poem may not be amiss:

Und auf dem bemoosten Hügel,
Ueber den des Sturmes Flügel
Flattert, walle ich allein.336

The mossy hill, the wings of the storm, the lonely wanderer are all Ossianic, as is the lament (p. 216):

Auch mich, auch mich, schliesst einst im Felde
Ein aufgethürmter Hügel ein,
Auch ich werd’ unter Eichenschatten

Wo am bemoosten Steine, etc.

In “Das Gesicht,” a bardic poem that appeared anonymously in the Almanach der deutschen Musen for 1773 (pp. 23–5), we have a splendid illustration of how far the imitation of Ossianic apparitions was carried.—The situation of a ghost appearing upon a stream of light and the beholder trembling in terror, as presented in “Die Erscheinung” by N——ch,337 is Ossianic.

The Barden–Almanach der Teutschen for 1802 contains a bardic poem, “Wodan und Braga,” with Ossianic nature touches, as the following extract will show (pp. 174–6):

Welch ein Aechzen weht vom Hayn der Fichten,
.........
Blut’ge Schatten,...
Wimmeln aus der Finsterniss hervor,
.........
Schreiten über Hayde, Sumpf und Moor.

Plötzlich, gleich dem Aufruhr wilder Wogen,
Braus’t der Sturm, und hohler Donner kracht:
Unterm dunkelblauen Himmelsbogen
Rollt er, rollt er in Gewitter–Pracht.

... aus der Felsen–Oede
Donnert Nachhall durch den Fichten–Wald.

Sufficient examples have been given to show the nature of Ossianic imitation as practiced by the minor bardic poets. Among the features they admired in Ossian was his independence of all rules and conventions, and here they approach the writers of the Storm and Stress. Nor did they hesitate to place him on a level with Homer. Interesting in this connection is the following statement by Bernold: “Und wo nahm denn Ossian seine Regeln her? aus der Natur—und doch übertrifft dieser Dichter in meinen Augen noch einigermassen den Homer selbst und taugt wenigstens für einen Schweizer besser zu einem Vorbild als jener, indem seine besungenen Gegenstände, sowohl in als ausser der Natur, den unsrigen näher kommen und ungleich ähnlicher sind, als jene der Griechen und Römer oder anderer Nationen.”338 What Ossian meant to them is laid down in a poem “An Heyder,” by J. G. Schulz, published in the Leipziger Musenalmanach for 1783, with a striking quotation from which (pp. 152–3) we shall leave this portion of our subject.—Grim sickness has chased the joyous muses away from the poet’s side; no friend can aid, no book console him:

Nur Ossians des Barden Klage
Umgiebt in meinem Jammer mich.
Da seh ich ihn in seiner Väter Höhle,
Voll tiefen Schmerz die heisse Seele,
Um Oskarn, der vor Ihm erblich
Die väterliche Zähre weinen:
Und höre seiner Harfe Jammerlaut
Durch dumpfe Klüfte wiederhallen.
Ich seh wie ihm auf ihren luftgen Hallen
Die Geister der Vergangenheit erscheinen,
Und Fingaln, der hernieder schaut
Auf seinen alten müdgeweinten Sohn,
Den er von allen einsam übrig siehet,
Den Barden, den des Tages Schimmer fliehet.—
......
Hier find ich all die vielen Leiden,
Das karge Loos der Sterblichkeit,
Und die Erinnrung an verflossne Freuden,
Die zu den gegenwärtgen Leiden
Noch Schwefel in die Flamme streut.—

Footnotes

Cf. infra, p. 136. 1

Cf. infra, p. 42. 2

Prague, Vienna, Zurich, and Basel are included in the list of places of publication, a fact that calls for no further explanation. 3

Fingal appeared early in December, 1761, although 1762 is the date given on the title–page Cf. Bailey Saunders, The Life and Letters of James Macpherson, London, 1895, p. 161. 4

These as well as all later references to the Poems of Ossian are made to the Tauchnitz Edition (1847), which contains the complete works and is probably more easily accessible than any other, particularly on the continent. 5

Macpherson’s first dissertation is the one entitled “A Dissertation Concerning the Aera of Ossian,” the second the “Dissertation concerning the Poems of Ossian.” 6

The almanacs were generally published in the year before that for which they were intended, but the date covered by them is given in this bibliography. 7

The title has ‘den.’ 8

The date of publication (1775) is not given on the title–page. [9]

Meyer’s Klassiker Ausgaben, Goethe, Vol. 2, p. 480, has p. 230. 10

References to the Allg. Lit. Zeitung and several other papers are given in pages, although the numbers refer to columns. 11

Ossian, Fils de Fingal,... Poésies Galliques, Traduites sur l’Anglois de M. Macpherson, Par M. Le Tourneur, 2 vols., Paris, 1777. 12

Vincent–Antoine Arnault, 1766–1834. 13

Edinburgh, 1798. 14

The date of the first appearance of the poems of Ossian is often stated erroneously as 1762, so Kürschner’s Dtsche Nat.–Litt., Klopstock, Vol. 3, p. xx; Hettner’s Literaturgesch. des 18. Jahrh., iii, 2, p. 122; Klopstock’s Works, ed. Boxberger, Vol. 5, p. xxi; Hofmann–Wellenhof in his biography of Denis, p. 165, etc., etc. 15

Macpherson was born in 1736, not in 1738 as generally stated. Cf. Saunders, The Life and Letters of James Macpherson, pp. 32–4. 16

For exact titles of these and following publications, cf. Bibliography. 17

We must not overlook the fact, however, that Macpherson’s Ossian appeared at a time when literary forgeries were common. 18

It has occurred to me that the picture of Ossian and Malvina entered into Goethe’s conception of the harper and Mignon in Wilhelm Meister, but more of this in the chapter on Goethe. 19

Besides these names Ryno, Toskar, Alpin, Minona, Minvane, Comala, Daura, and others were at one time not uncommon in Germany, and now and again we hear of an Ossian—there is an Ossian H. in Leipzig at this day. Several of the names mentioned were employed as pseudonyms and all of them figure prominently in the poetry of the day. 20

Cf. infra, pp. 122–3. 21

Cp. Fraser’s Mag., N. S., Vol. 21, p. 520. 22

German translations of the latter appeared in Leipzig, 1760, and 1787. 23

Cf. infra, pp. 78–9, 91. 24

Cf. J. Barnstorff, Young’s Nachtgedanken und ihr Einfluss auf die deutsche Litteratur, Bamberg, 1895 (Dissertation). 25

It had played a rôle in Klopstock’s work, but was first widely promulgated by Werther. 26

The ‘joy of grief’ ([Greek: himeros nooio]) is found also in Homer, e. g., Iliad, 23, 108, but not until the appearance of Ossian did it assume importance. 27

Cf. Retzer, Denis’ Lit. Nachlass, Vol. 2 (1802), p. 169. 28

Cf. l. c., p. 172. Letter dated Wien, Dec. 8, 1769. 29

For exact data cf. Bibliography. 30

Cp. supra, p. 73. 31

Cf. review in the Neue Bibl. der schönen Wissenschaften, Vol. 2, i, pp. 54–88. 32

Cf. Han. Mag., 1763, p. 1468. 33

Cf. ibid., p. 1467. 34

Cf. ibid., p. 1468. 35

Cf. Lessing, Anti–Goeze, No. 8. Wittenberg’s reply: Sendschreiben an den Herrn Hofrath Lessing. 36

Cf. Zuschrift, op. cit., which is signed J. A. Engelbrecht. 37

Cp. infra, p. 106. 38

Cf. Gött. Anz., 1765, i, p. 129. 39

Cf. l. c., 1765, i, p. 130. 40

Cf. l. c., 1767, ii, p. 1140. Cp. supra, p. 72. 41

Cf. l. c., 1765, i, p. 130. 42

Cf. ibid. 43

Cf. l. c., 1767, ii, p. 1140. 44

Cp. Gött. gel. Anz., 1765, i, p. 129; supra, p. 72. 45

Cf. Neue Bibl., Vol. 3, i, p. 38. 46

Gedichte, Leipzig, 1795, Cf. Meusel. Lexikon, Vol. 2, pp. 237–8. 47

Cf. Letter of Nov. 14, 1771. Muncker, Lessings Verhältnis zu Klopstock, p. 224. 48

Cf. Scheel, Vierteljahrschrift für Litteraturgeschichte, Vol. 6, pp. 188–94; Seuffert, Gött. gel. Anz., 1895, i, p. 72. 49

Cf. infra, p. 120. 50

Cf. Scherer, Gesch. der deutschen Litt., 7th ed., p. 643. 51

Cf. Tacitus de German. 3: “Sunt illis haec quoque carmina, quorum relatu, quem baritum (barditum) vocant...” Cp. Knothe, Kretschmann, Zittau, 1858, pp. 17–8. 52

For different shades of meaning cf. Hermanns Tod, xv; Hermanns Schlacht Ein Bardiet. Klopstock’s note. 53

Cf. Sponda, II. 9–12. 54

Cf. Der Hügel, und der Hain, II. 12–4. He refers here not to Ossian alone, but to Caedmon, “der grösste Dichter nach Ossian unter unsern Alten,” the Heliand, etc.—seiner = the songs of the bards of his fatherland. 55

Cf. J.M. Lappenberg, Briefe von und an Klopstock. Braunschweig, 1867, p. 164. 56

Cf. ibid., p. 172. 57

Servian folk–songs. Cf. Talvj, Volkslieder der Serben, 2d ed., Leipzig, 1853. Preface. 58

Cf. Lappenberg, op. cit., p. 210. 59

Cf. Muncker, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock. Geschichte seines Lebens und seiner Schriften. Stuttgart, 1888, p. 390. 60

Cf. Bibliography, supra, p. 7. 61

Cf. Lappenberg, op. cit. p. 210. 62

Cf. Tacitus, Agric., II. Cp. infra, p. 123. 63

Cf. Letter to Gleim, dated Copenhagen, June 31, 1769. Klopstock u. seine Freunde... herausgegeben von Klamer Schmidt, 2 vols., Halberstadt, 1810. Vol. 2, pp. 214–5. 64

Cf. Der Hügel, und der Hain, l. 4, where the term Celten is used to signify all the Germanic peoples, ‘including the Celts.’ 65

Cf. Vol. 6, ii, p. 232 (1800). 66

The earliest impulse of any import toward the introduction of Norse mythology proceeded from Gerstenberg’s Lied eines Skalden (1766), which exerted a wide influence. For an account of Klopstock’s relation to the Lied eines Skalden, cf. Scheel, Vierteljahrschrift, Vol. vi. 67

Cf. Friedr. Gottl. Klopstocks Wingolf. Kritische Ausg. nebst Commentar von Jaro Pawel, Wien, 1882; Kürschner’s Dtsche Nat.–Litt., Klopstock, Vol. 3, pp. 4–29. 68

Bacchus. 69

Cp. Die deutsche Sprache, l. 26: “Orpheus der Celt.” 70

When Klopstock speaks of the songs of the bards, he does not refer particularly to the songs of Ossian, but rather to the German hero–songs and battle–songs. He used the term in this sense before the songs of Ossian appeared. 71

Cf. Klopstocks Oden. Erläutert von Heinrich Düntzer. 2d ed., Leipzig, 1878, i, p. 392. 72

Baggesen wrote a bardic ode, An die Telyn, pp. 171–3, Taschenbuch for 1802. Hgbn von J. G. Jacobi, Hamburg. Haschka employs the term in Der Entschluss der Männinnen, Litt. Monate, pp. 111–3; Bardale he uses in the poem Der Frühling, l. c., p. 314, and Filea in the Geburtslied, l. c., p. 311 (cp. infra, pp. 149–50). Bilfinger, in the bardic poem entitled Hartmanns Tod, speaks of the “Klang der Telyn,” Almanach der deutschen Musen for 1778, p. 255. Friedrich Krug von Nidda speaks of the Telyn in his poem Der Feldherr und der Barde, Taschenbuch zum geselligen Vergnügen, 1813, p. 119. Cp. infra, p. 147. 73

Cf. supra, p. 85. 74

Cf. Lappenberg, op. cit., p. 211. 75

Cf. ibid., p. 218. 76

Marie Angélique Catharine Kauffmann, 1741–1807, the Swiss historical and portrait painter. 77

Cf. Klopstock und seine Freunde, Vol. 2, p. 228. 78

Cf. Letter of Klopstock to Gleim, Bernstorff, Aug. 28, 1770, l. c., p. 247. 79

Cf. Lappenberg, op. cit., pp. 226–7. 80

Cf. Vom deutschen Hexameter. Aus den Fragmenten Ueber Sprache und Dichtkunst. Hamburg, 1779, pp. 117–9. Klopstocks sämmtliche Werke, ed. Back u. Spindler, Leipzig, 1823–30, Vol. 15, pp. 165–6. 81

Cp. supra, pp. 72, 78–9. 82

Cf. Retzer, Denis Lit. Nachlass, 1801–2, Vol. 2, p. 116. 83

Cf. Gelehrtenrepublik, p. 178. 84

Cf. § xiii. 85

Cf. Lappenberg, op. cit., p. 171. 86

Cf. supra, p. 81. 87

Cf. History of Scotland, London, 1800. 88

Gerstenberg was sagacious enough to notice Macpherson’s borrowings and upon this conviction he based his first scruples as to the authenticity of the poems. Cf. infra, p. 105. 89

Cf. op. cit. 90

Cf. Vetterlein, Klopstocks Oden und Elegieen, 3 vols. Leipzig, 1827–8. Vol. 2, p. 106, after whom Düntzer, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 349. 91

Cp. “bemoste Steine,” Hermannsschlacht, Sc. 2, and Ossian’s continually recurring “mossy stones.” 92

Cp. infra, p. 127. 93

Cf. Muncker, op. cit., p. 384. 94

Cf. p. 208, ll. 1–18 (Tauchnitz). 95

Cf. The Songs of Selma, p. 208, l. 13. 96

Cf. Fingal, Bk. ii, p. 231, ll. 10–12, Bk. iv, p. 249, ll. 11–6, 24–7; Temora, Bk. iii, p. 326, ll. 28–32, Bk. viii, first 9 ll., p. 361; etc., etc. 97

Cf. supra, p. 93. 98

Cf. op. cit. 99

Cf. p. 212, ll. 15–6 (Tauch.). 100

Not the country, as Muncker and others. 101

Cf. op. cit., Vol. 1, pp. 137–8. 102

Cf. Vol. 2, pp. 90–1. 103

Cf. Deutsches Museum, 1782, i, pp. 165–8. 104

Cf. l. c., 1782, ii, pp. 389–95. 105

Cp. l. 50 of the ode Kaiser Heinrich (1764): “Dein ist der Vorzeit edler Gesang!” etc. 106

The first edition had a chorus in the second scene corresponding to the one cited, except that the last line read: “Wie die Frühlingsluft in der Eiche,” and a stanza by two bards in the third scene beginning: Ihr Sohne Thuiskon’s, der Bardengesang
Schweigt von den Schlachten der lang vergangnen Zeit. 107

In the first edition only. 108

Not May 9, as Back und Spindler and others. Cf. Archiv für Literaturgeschichte, Vol. 3, p. 397 109

Cf. supra, p. 91. 110

Cf. ibid. But cf. Löbell, Die Entwicklung der deutschen Poesie, etc., Braunschweig, 1856, Vol. 1, p. 282. 111

Cf. Arch. für Litteraturgesch., Vol. 3, p. 404. 112

Cf. Memoirs of the Life of Sir James Mackintosh, 2 vols., London, 1835. Vol. 1, p. 345. Letter dated July 28, 1807. 113

Cf. Ehrmann, Die Bardische Lyrik im Achtzehnten Jahrhundert. (Diss.) Halle, 1892; reviewed in the Gött. gel. Anz., 1895, i, pp. 69–80, where a Vorgeschichte of the new Bardentum is given on pp. 69–72. Kürschner’s Dtsche Nat. Litt., Vol. 48, etc. 114

Denis first received the name from Kretschmann; cf. Lieder Sineds des Barden, 1772, p. 173, note. 115

It must not be forgotten, however, that this giving of names was no uncommon thing a century and a half ago, the names of Greek poets being frequently resorted to, e. g., Gessner—the German Theocritus, Madame Karsch—Sappho, Willamov—Pindar, etc., and likewise Klopstock—Homer, Gerstenberg—Alciphron. 116

The term bard was not exclusively confined to German poetry, but speaking broadly, bardic and German were synonymous. Cf. Ehrmann, op. cit., p. 14. 117

Max Koch, in his review of Ehrmann’s Bardische Lyrik, Lit. Centralblatt, 1893, pp. 796–7, does not consider Ossian as the chief source of the introduction of the spirits of the departed, but I am inclined to refer most of this business to Ossian. 118

Cf. Ehrmann, op. cit., p. 47. 119

Cf. l. c., pp. 4–59, where examples are given. 120

Cf. l. c., p. 59. 121

Briefe über Merkwürdigkeiten der Litteratur. Erste und Zweyte Sammlung. Schleswig und Leipzig. 1766. Dritte Sammlung. 1767. Continued in Ueber Merkwürdigkeiten der Litteratur. Hamburg und Bremen. 1770. 122

On pp. 103–5. Cp. supra, p. 78. The letter further contains paragraphs on The Reliques of ancient English poetry (pp. 105–8) and on Dänische Kiämpe–Viser (pp. 108–15). 123

Cf. l. c., p. 104. 124

Cf. Vierteljahrsch. für Litteraturgesch., Vol. 2, pp. 180–1. 125

Cf. Works, 1815–6. Vol. 2, p. 90. 126

Cf. l. c., p. 92. 127

Cf. Vierteljahrsch. für Litteraturgesch., Vol. 2, p. 182. 128

Cf. Works, Vol. 2, p. 97. 129

Cf. V. f. L, l. c. 130

Cf. Works, Vol. 2, p. 98. Compare Gerstenberg’s Schlachtlied: “Feuerbraunen Angesichts, Ihr Auge blutroth, starr ihr Blick.” This poem shows the influence of Ossian, especially in the refrain: “Die Sonne sinkt, und stiller wird’s im Thal, Und Geisterschatten lispeln durch die Luft.” 131

Cf. l. c., p. 93. 132

Cf. l. c., pp. 93–5. 133

Cf. l. c., p. 104. 134

Cf. l. c., p. 144. 135

Cf. l. c., p. 145. 136

Cf. Temora, Bk. iv, p. 337, l. 34 and p. 339, ll. 25–6. 137

Cf. Works, Vol. 2, p. 146. 138

Cf. l. c., p. 81. 139

Cf. ibid. 140

Cf. l. c., p. 85. 141

Cf. Jacobs, Gerstenbergs Ugolino, Berlin, 1898. 142

Cf. Works, Vol. 1, pp. 386–7. 143

Cf. l. c., pp. 395–6. 144

Cf. op. cit., pp. 105–6. 145

Cf. Works, Vol. 1, p. 402. 146

Cf. l. c., p. 408. 147

Cf. Comala, p. 139, l. 33; The Songs of Selma, p. 211, l. 5; etc., etc. 148

Cf. Works, Vol. 1, p. 424. 149

Cf. Jacobs, op. cit., p. 106. 150

Cf. Works, Vol. 1, p. 467. Act 4. 151

Cf. l. c., p. 497. Act 5. 152

Cf. l. c., p. 438. 153

Cf. l. c., p. 440. 154

Cf. Jacobs, op. cit., p. 106. 155

Cf. Works, Vol. 1, p. 445. 156

Jacobs has Fingal by mistake. 157

Cf. l. c., p. 494. 158

Cf. l. c., p. 456. 159

Cf. l. c., p. 457. 160

Cf. l. c., p. 464. 161

Cf. l. c., pp. 487–8. 162

Cf. Knebel’s Literarischer Nachlass und Briefwechsel, Leipzig, 1835, Vol. 2, p. 87. Notice by Boie. For further particulars, cf. Jacobs, op. cit., pp. 127–45. 163

Cf. Calthon and Colmal, p. 182, ll. 1–2. Cp. Berrathon, p. 377, l. 21: “My dwelling was not always in caves.” 164

Cf. Carthon, p. 156, ll. 15–6. Cp. Fingal, Bk. ii. p. 234, l. 14: “Her hair was the wing of the raven;” Dar–Thula, p. 279, l. 36: “Thy hair like the raven’s wing,” etc. 165

Cp. Dar–Thula, p. 279, l. 36–p. 280, l. 3. In this connection the following extract from a review of a Correspondence entre S.A.R. le Prince Gustave de Suède avec S.E. le Senateur Schaeffer (1772) in the Frankfurter gelehrte Anzeigen, 1772, p. 277, deserves to be quoted:... “aber, zwo Maximen haben wir drin vermisst, die doch, unsrer Meinung nach, durchgehends in einer Fürstlichen Erziehung herrschen sollten: die, welche David seinem Sohne gab: Sey ein Mann! und die, welche Fingal dem Seinigen einprägte: Bend the Strong in Arms, but spare the feeble Hand. Be thou a Stream of many Tides against the foe of thy people, but like the gale that moves the grass to those who ask thy aid.” 166

Cf. The Songs of Selma, pp. 208–10. 167

Cf. Works, Vol. 1, p. 109. 168

Cf. Vol. 77, i, pp. 116–8 (1787). 169

The reviewer in the Neue Bibl. der schönen Wissenschaften, Vol. 34, ii, p. 284, criticizes this scene rather sarcastically. He says: “Und nun gerathen die Herren in eine poetische Entzückung und deklamiren sich mancherley im ossianischen Schwung vor. Nachdem sie sich aber beiderseits aus diesem Schwindel erholt haben,” etc. 170

Cf. Works, Vol. 1, pp. 104–7. 171

Cf. l. c., pp. 107–9. 172

Cf. Act 1, i, 3; p. 52. 173

Cf. Act 4, 6; p. 252. 174

Cf. Act 2, i, 1; p. 100. Ossian’s heroines all have snow–white hands, arms, necks and bosoms, and generally raven–black locks. Cp. Lathmon, p. 277, l. 9: “Her hair spreads on her neck of snow.” 175

Cf. Act 4, 3; p. 214. 176

Cf. p. 184, Tauchnitz. 177

Cp. e. g., Cath–Loda, Duan i, pp. 128–9, Oithona, pp. 172–4, etc. 178

Cf. Act 2, ii; p. 129. Cp. The Battle of Lora, p. 303, ll. 17–8: “The moon looks into thy cave,” etc. 179

Cf. Vol. 34, ii, p. 298. 180

Cf. l. c., p. 288. 181

Cf. 1789, i, p. 719. 182

Cf. Works, Vol. 1, pp. 25–6. 183

Cf. Act 2, ii, 4; p. 132. Song of Minona. 184

Cf. ibid., p. 133. 185

Cf. ibid., p. 134. 186

Cf. Act 3, ii, 4; pp. 171–2. 187

As to the nature of these songs, cf. Ryno’s explanations to Edelstan, Act 4, 3 pp. 219–25. 188

Cf. Act 4, 3; p. 220. 189

Cf. Act 2, ii, 5; p. 137. 190

Cf. Act 3, ii, 2; p. 166. 191

(Du Geist.) Cp. Fingal, Bk. ii, p. 227, l. 5: The ghost sat upon “a dark–red stream of fire.” etc. 192

Cf. Act 3, ii, 5; pp. 201–2. 193

Cf. Act 5, 1; p. 306. 194

Cf. Act 5, 2; p. 325. 195

In Ossian Brumo is a place of worship in Craca. Cf. Temora, Bk. ii, p. 319, l. 25. Cp. Fingal, Bk. vi, p. 265, ll. 28–9: “Within the circle of Brumo, he spoke to the stone of power.” 196

Cf. Act 5, 4; p. 343. 197

Cf. Act 4, 8; p. 282. 198

It has been stated and doubted that Leonore’s disguise in the last act of Schiller’s Fiesco was suggested by Ossian. I shall give my views on the question in connection with the chapter on Schiller. 199

Cf. Works, Vol. 1, p. 365. 200

Cf. P. v. Hofmann–Wellenhof, Michael Denis Ein Beitrag zur Deutsch–Oesterreichischen Literaturgeschichte des xviii. Jahrhunderts. Innsbruck, 1881. 201

Denis first became acquainted with Ossian in Cesarotti’s translation in the year 1763. 202

Notice that in the case of Denis, Klopstock was not uninstrumental in instilling veneration for the Celtic Homer; Gerstenberg, on the other hand, is not mentioned. Cp. supra, p. 82. 203

Cf. Retzer, Denis’ Lit. Nachlass, 1801–2, Vol. 2, pp. 158–9. 204

Cf. ibid., p. 124. Letter of Gleim to Denis, dated Halberstadt, May 3, 1769. 205

Cf. Allg. Deutsche Bibl., Vol. 10, i, p. 64. 206

Cf. ibid., p. 65. 207

Cf. ibid., p. 69. 208

For a detailed notice of this essay cf. the paragraphs on Herder, for which all further remarks on Herder’s attitude will be reserved. 209

Cf. Allg. deutsche Bibl., Vol. 17, ii, p. 438. 210

Cf. ibid., p. 442. 211

Cf. ibid., p. 445. 212

Cf. ibid., pp. 445–6; cp. supra, pp. 85–6. 213

Cf. Neue Bibl. der schönen Wissenschaften, Vol. 8, i, p. 99 (1769). 214

Cf. ibid., p. 101. 215

Cf. ibid.. pp. 102–5. Episode of Morna, daughter of Cormac, Fingal, Bk. i, p. 219, l. 13–p. 220, l. 34. 216

Cf. ibid., pp. 105–8. 217

Cf. ibid., pp. 108–9. Fingal, Bk. ii, p. 230, l. 28–p. 231, l. 6. 218

Cf. Ossians und Sineds Lieder, Vol. 1, pp. 117–32; cp. p. 120, note. 219

Cf. ibid., Vol. 4, pp. 81–97. 220

Cf. Gött. Anz. von gel. Sachen, 1768, ii, p. 1285.—In regard to the form of Comala, cp. also Ehrmann, op. cit., p. 87. 221

Cf. ibid., p. 1282. 222

For examples cf. Hofmann–Wellenhof, op. cit., pp. 182–4.—The different meters employed are discussed on pp. 174–81 of the biography. 223

Ramler read Fingal in Denis’s translation with his pupils in the Berlin cadet–school and explained the epic to receptive ears. In a letter dated Oct. 5, 1777, he writes to Denis of his success in the following words: “Was für einen Eindruck die mächtigen und natürlichen schönen Gedanken Ihres Ossians auf meine achtzehnjährigen Zuhörer gemacht haben, kann ich Ihnen nicht beschreiben. Sie waren traurig, wenn die Stunde sobald zu Ende gieng; und wenn ich des folgenden Tages das Buch wieder öffnete, stieg ihre Seele ihnen in die Augen. Sie verschlangen alles;” etc. Cf. Michael’s Denis Lit. Nachlass, 1801–2. Vol. 2, p. 137. 224

Cf. Die Lieder Sineds des Barden, pp. 1–2. 225

Cp. Cath–Loda, ii, p. 133, l. 26; The Songs of Selma, p. 212, l.5; also The Death of Cuthullin, p. 292, l. 22; “The silent valleys of night,” etc. 226

Cp. The Death of Cuthullin, p. 292, ll. 20–1. 227

Ossian. 228

Cf. Lieder Sineds, p. 4. It was a common circumstance for a German poet at that time to assume that the mantle of some great forerunner had fallen upon his shoulders, teste Nicolai, who wished to be considered Lessing’s successor; Denis hints at his representation of Ossian more than once. 229

Cf. Hofmann–Wellenhof, op. cit., p. 213. 230

Cf. Lieder Sineds, p. 85, Gruss des Tages. Cp. Beurlaubung des Tages, p. 142: “Auf Ihren Barden sey der Geist der Lieder.” 231

Cf. ibid., Theresia die Mutter, p. 107. 232

Cp. e. g., Berrathon, p. 380, last 3 ll. 233

Cf. Temora, Bk. iv, p. 334, ll. 7–8; Bk. vii, p. 357, l. 23, etc. 234

Cf. Lieder Sineds, pp. 96–7. 235

Cf. ibid., p. 103. 236

Cf. ibid., p. 100. Also Urlaub von der sichtbaren Welt (p. 287), and Drittes Vaterlandslied (p. 223): “Wonne der Wehmuth.” Cp. Goethe’s poem, “Wonne der Wehmuth,” and infra, p. 150. 237

Cf. ibid., pp. 100–1. 238

Cf. ibid., p. 110. Cp. Theresia die Starkmüthige, p. 120: “Des... Schwertes Blitz,” and p. 121: “Blitz des Schwertes.” 239

Cf. Calthon and Colmal, p. 184, ll. 22–3, The Songs of Selma, p. 211, ll. 6–7, Fingal, Bk. iv, p. 248, l. 26, etc., etc. Cp. infra, p. 142. 240

Cf. Sul–Malla of Lumon, p. 201, ll. 17–9. 241

Cf. Sineds Lieder, p. 111. 242

Cf. Fingal, Bk. iii, p. 239, l. 23, etc. 243

Similarly An den Obersten der Barden Teuts, p. 184, etc. 244

Cf. Fingal, Bk. vi, p. 264, l. 25, etc. 245

Cf. Temora, Bk. i, p. 310, l. 24. 246

Cf. Lieder Sineds, p. 117. Cp. Goethe’s Faust, Part 2, l. 11529. 247

Cf. Fingal, Bk. vi, p. 264, l. 24. 248

Cf. Lathmon, p. 275, l. 2. 249

The “Geist der Lieder” is repeatedly referred to in the Lieder Sineds, e. g., pp. 142, 182, etc. Cf. Ehrmann, op. cit., p. 40, and cp. infra, pp. 141 and 147. 250

Cf. The War of Caros, p. 188, ll. 1–2: “The light of the song rises in Ossian’s soul.” 251

Cf. Temora, Bk. iv, p. 338, ll. 8–9: “The light–winged thought that flies across the soul.” Bk. vi, p. 350, ll. 11–2: “As lightning... a thought came rushing along my soul.” 252

Cf. Dar–Thula, p. 279, last 2 ll.: “Thy soul was generous and mild, like the hour of the setting sun,” etc. 253

Cf. Carric–Thura, p. 146, ll. 3–4; cp. Temora, Bk. iii, p. 328, l. 6; etc.; also Ossians und Sineds Lieder, 1784, Vol. 4, p. 148. 254

Cf. Lathmon, p. 275, l. 16. 255

Mein Spiel. 256

Cf. Temora, Bk. ii, p. 323, l. 28. 257

Cf. Comala, p. 140, l. 27, and note. 258

Cp. Sineds Lieder, pp. 224, 235, etc. 259

Cf. e. g., Croma, p. 179, ll. 16–7: The joy “was like the faint beam of the moon spread on a cloud in heaven.” 260

Cf. Sineds Lieder, pp. 209–10, note. 261

Cf. ibid., p. 215. 262

Cp. Urlaub, pp. 284, 288, Vierte Klage, p. 270, and infra, p. 149. 263

Cp. also Ossians und Sineds Lieder, 1784, Vol. 4, p. 149, p. 203; Vol. 5, p. 151. 264

Cf. particularly Temora, Bk. i, p. 313, ll. 1–3 and the note; also Bk. vii, p. 355, ll. 20–1. 265

Cp. Das Kunstfeuer, Ossians und Sineds Lieder, 1784, Vol. 4, p. 206. 266

Cf. ibid., Vol. 3, p. 50. 267

Cp. infra, p. 138. 268

Cf. The Battle of Lora, p. 298, ll. 14–5. 269

Denis had originally translated from the English edition of 1765. 270

Cf. Bibliography, 1777. 271

Cf. Ossians und Sineds Lieder, Vol. 4, pp. 101–2. 272

Cf. Temora, Bk. i, p. 307, l. 3. 273

Cf. Temora, Bk. ii, p. 324, l. 6; Berrathon, p. 374, l. 7. 274

Cf. Dar–Thula, p. 287, ll. 4–5; cp. ibid., p. 285, ll. 30–1. 275

Cf. Kürschner’s Dtsche Nat.–Lit., Vol. 48, pp. 305–11.—Carl Friedrich Kretschmann, (der Barde Rhingulph). Von Dr. Hermann Fried. Knothe, Zittau, 1858. 276

When we speak of the lyric poems, we mean those that are not distinctively bardic. The bardic poems are naturally, as a rule, of a lyric nature. 277

Cf. Works, Vol. I, p. 2. 278

Cf. ibid., p. 9. 279

Cf. ibid. pp. 26–7. 280

Cf. ibid., pp. 48, 73, 88, 106, etc. 281

Cf. Vierteljahrschrift für Litteraturgeschichte, Vol. 6, p. 199. 282

Cf. supra, p. 130. 283

Cf. pp. 142, 209, 210, 283, etc. 284

Cf. Leitzmann in his review of Ehrmann’s Bardische Lyrik, Literaturblatt für germ. und rom. Phil., Vol. 16, pp. 223–4 (1895). 285

Cf. Temora, Bk. viii, p. 363, l. 24; p. 368, l. 3; etc. 286

Cf. Fingal, Bk. i, p. 217, ll. 8–9. 287

Cf. Fingal, Bk. iv, p. 247, ll. 33–5. 288

Cp. supra, p. 129, infra, p. 144. 289

Cf. The Songs of Selma, p. 211, l. 6. Towards the end of the first canto of the Klage (p. 147) we have: “Des Sturmes Zorn.” 290

Cf. Tauchnitz, p. 211, ll. 5–12. 291

Cp. also Rhingulphs Klage, p. 138, etc. 292

Cf. Fingal, Bk. i, p. 217, l. 19; Temora, Bk. v, p. 341, l. 31, etc. The passage in Fingal has “Thou breaker of the shields,” and so Kretschmann: “du Schild–Zerbrecher.” 293

Cp. supra, pp. 93 and 97. 294

Cf. Fingal, Bk. v, p. 259, next to the last line. 295

Cf. supra, pp. 97–8, 110–1. 296

Cf. The Songs of Selma, p. 211, ll. 8–9. Cp. supra, p. 100, but cp. Exodus, xv, 7, Psalms lix, 13, etc. 297

Cf. Temora, Bk. vi, p. 352, l. 23; also ibid., p. 350, l. 17 and note, etc. 298

Cf. Temora, Bk. iv, p. 338, l. 13. 299

Cp. supra, pp. 129 and 142. 300

Cf. Fingal, Bk. v, p. 257, l. 30. 301

Cf. The War of Caros, p. 192, ll. 15–6, etc. 302

Cf. Temora, Bk. iii, p. 329, ll. 24–5. 303

Cf. The War of Caros, p. 191, l. 8. 304

Cf. The War of Inis–Thona, p. 204, ll. 30–1. 305

Cf. Fingal, Bk. i, p. 221, ll. 4–7. 306

Cf. ibid., Bk. iii, p. 240, l. 25. 307

Cf. ibid., Bk. vi, p. 265, ll. 4–5. 308

Cf. Temora, Bk. vii, p. 357, ll. 2–30. 309

Cf. Fingal, Bk. iii, p. 240, l. 12. 310

Cf. Temora, Bk. vi, p. 354, ll. 3–4. 311

Cf. Works, Vol. 2, p. 223; cp. supra, p. 128. 312

Cf. supra, p. 89. 313

Cf. Temora, Bk. ii, p. 324, ll. 28–9. 314

Cf. Works, Vol. 5, p. 13. Cp. Ehrmann, op. cit., pp. 54–5. 315

Cf. Vol. 5, p. 13; cp. supra, p. 130. 316

The word Telyn, as we have seen, was adopted by the bards from Klopstock. Kretschmann uses it in the poem An Vater Gleim, and elsewhere. Cp. supra, p. 88. 317

Gottlob David Hartmann, 1752–75, who in a letter to Denis, dated Tübingen, Sept. 24, 1772, confesses that he owes everything to him (Denis) and his Ossian. (Cf. Retzer, Denis’ Lit. Nachlass, 1801–2, Vol. 2, p. 194.) Hartmann has a poem An den Barden Rhingulph, which begins (Alm. der deutschen Musen for 1773, p. 12): “O Hermanns Barde, der Du an Ossians Empörtem Busen Schlachtengesang gehorcht,” and in which the word Telyn is also used (p. 13). 318

Cp. Die Regeln, Works, Vol. 5, p. 338. 319

For full title cf. Bibliography, supra, p. 14. 320

Haschka was apparently extremely fond of the name Minona, for we meet with it several times again in the same collection. In the Liebeslied (pp. 21–2) Minona is the ideal maiden love; then we have a poem entitled An Minona (pp. 22–3), another one Minona (pp. 116–7), still another one Cronnan und Minona (p. 218), and she occurs once more in Der Blumenstrauss (p. 312). 321

Cf. The Songs of Selma, p. 211, l. 15; Fingal, Bk. i, p. 218, l. 29; etc., etc. 322

Cp. supra, p. 134. 323

Cp. supra, p. 133. 324

Cf. Cathlin of Clutha, p. 196, l. 3; Sul–Malla of Lumon, p. 199, l. 13, etc. 325

Cf. The Songs of Selma, p. 212, ll. 32–3; cp. supra, p. 130, and infra, p. 150. 326

Cf. Temora, Bk. iii, p. 329, ll. 23–4; cp. supra, pp. 97–8, 110–1, 141, and 144. 327

Cf. e. g., Temora, Bk. i, p. 310, l. 29. 328

Cf. Carthon, p. 157, l. 23. 329

Cp. supra, p. 128. 330

Cf. Fingal, Bk. iv. p. 245, l. 8. 331

Cf. Almanach der deutschen Musen for 1772, pp. 106–7. 332

Cf. Litt. Monate, p. 127. Cp. Dar–Thula, p. 278, l. 5; p. 279, l. 11, etc. 333

Cf. Goedeke’s Grundriss, 2d ed., Vol. 4, p. 112, 27. 334

Cf. Ehrmann, op. cit., pp. 54–5, and supra, p. 147. 335

Cf. Leipziger Musenalmanach for 1776, p. 212. 336

Cf. Taschenbuch für Dichter und Dichterfreunde, 1778, pp. 87–8. 337

Cf. Aus den Papieren des Barden von Riva. Telliade, etc. Herausgegeben von Ernst Götzinger. St. Gallen, 1891. p. 12 (Vorrede zur Telliade). 338

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