21-23 IX 1773
6 VIII 2013
6 VIII 2013
ULLINISH
“We got to Ulinish about six o'clock, and found a very good farm-house, of two stories.” (Boswell)
Macpherson’s Ossian is discussed again, and again Johnson takes pleasure in bettering McQueen. He says, “had it been really an ancient work, a true specimen how men thought at that time, it would have been a curiosity of the first rate. As a modern production, it is nothing.” At the time most readers loved the poetry, and were uninterested in the sources; in being so critical Johnson was to some extent sticking his neck out. Nowadays, ironically, no-one reads it as poetry, but as “a true specimen how men thought at that time”; it has become a touchstone of mid 18th century sensibility, as revealing, if less entertaining, than Boswell’s Johnson.
Bibliography
James Macpherson, The Works of Ossian (1765)
“We got to Ulinish about six o'clock, and found a very good farm-house, of two stories.” (Boswell)
Macpherson’s Ossian is discussed again, and again Johnson takes pleasure in bettering McQueen. He says, “had it been really an ancient work, a true specimen how men thought at that time, it would have been a curiosity of the first rate. As a modern production, it is nothing.” At the time most readers loved the poetry, and were uninterested in the sources; in being so critical Johnson was to some extent sticking his neck out. Nowadays, ironically, no-one reads it as poetry, but as “a true specimen how men thought at that time”; it has become a touchstone of mid 18th century sensibility, as revealing, if less entertaining, than Boswell’s Johnson.
Bibliography
James Macpherson, The Works of Ossian (1765)