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Its chord of penetrating passion and melancholy, again, its _Titanism_
as we see it in Byron,--what other European poetry possesses that like
the English, and where do we get it from? The Celts, with their vehement
reaction against the despotism of fact, with their sensuous nature,
their manifold striving, their adverse destiny, their immense
calamities, the Celts are the prime authors of this vein of piercing
regret and passion,--of this Titanism in poetry. A famous book,
Macpherson's _Ossian_,[262] carried in the last century this vein like a
flood of lava through Europe. I am not going to criticize Macpherson's
_Ossian_ here. Make the part of what is forged, modern, tawdry,
spurious, in the book, as large as you please; strip Scotland, if you
like, of every feather of borrowed plumes which on the strength of
Macpherson's _Ossian_ she may have stolen from that _vetus et major
Scotia_, the true home of the Ossianic poetry, Ireland; I make no
objection.


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