e._, Brown Robert; and certain
specimens of his talents, published in the ninetieth number of the
_Quarterly Review_. The picture which that paper gives of the habits
and feelings of a class of persons with which the general reader would
be apt to associate no ideas but those of wild superstition and rude
manners, is in the highest degree interesting; and I cannot resist the
temptation of quoting two of the songs of this hitherto unheard-of poet
of humble life.... Rude and bald as these things appear in a verbal
translation, and rough as they might possibly appear, even were the
originals intelligible, we confess we are disposed to think they would
of themselves justify Dr Mackay (editor of Mackay's Poems) in placing
this herdsman-lover among the true sons of song."
Of that department of the Gaelic Minstrelsy admired by Scott and
condemned by Macpherson, the English reader is presented in the present
work with specimens, to enable him to form his own judgment. These
specimens, it must however be remembered, not only labour under the
ordinary disadvantages of translations, but have been rendered from a
language which, in its poetry, is one of the least transfusible in the
world. Yet the effort which has been made to retain the spirit, and
preserve the rhythm and manner of the originals, may be sufficient to
establish that the honour of the Scottish Muse has not unworthily been
supported among the mountains of the Gael.
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