ABSTRACT
Hot on the heels of Edmund Burke, contemporary with Young, came the 'Oceanic' poems produced by James Macpherson. Macpherson always maintained that his publications were translated from Gaelic originals the 'Preface' to Fragments asserts that the public may depend on the following fragments as genuine remains of ancient Scottish poetry. Ossian's poetry was admired precisely because it appeared to be irregular and unpolished. Blair's comments, in 1763, suggest that he may have read Denis Diderot's De la poesie dramatique, for his argument proceeds from the sublime to a consideration of the conditions which encourage or inhibit sublime poetry. The emotional content of Ossian's poetry the feelings which control its form was finely understood by Goethe, in a way which is intimately part of the structure of his novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers. Coming to Werther, we find that the hero at first thinks much of Homer, and tries to be active and useful.
