SOURCE: "Ossian," in My Literary Passions, Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1895, pp. 66-8.

In the following essay, Howells briefly conveys his impressions of Ossian, stating that early on, he "gave the pretensions of Macpherson an unquestioning faith."

Very likely the reading of Ossian had something to do with my morbid anxieties. I had read Byron's imitation of him before that, and admired it prodigiously, and when my father got me the book—as usual I did not know where or how he got it—not all the tall forms that moved before the eyes of haunted bards in the dusky vale of autumn could have kept me from it. There were certain outline illustrations in it, which were very good in the cold Flaxman manner, and helped largely to heighten the fascination of the poems for me. They did not supplant the pastorals of Pope in my affections, and they...