Editing Ossian (section)

==Reception and influence==
The poems achieved international success. [[Napoleon]] and [[Denis Diderot|Diderot]] were prominent admirers, and [[Voltaire]] was known to have written parodies of them.<ref>Howard Gaskill, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=uDYPtqw0MHwC&pg=PA140 The reception of Ossian in Europe]'' (2004)</ref> [[Thomas Jefferson]] thought Ossian "the greatest poet that has ever existed",<ref>Quoted in {{cite journal|first=Frederick|last=Carpenter|title=The Vogue of Ossian in America|journal=American Literature|volume=2|year=1930–1931|pages=405–17|doi=10.2307/2920160 |jstor=2920160 }}</ref> and planned to learn Gaelic so as to read his poems in the original.<ref>{{cite book |year=1989 |editor1-last=Wilson |editor1-first=Douglas L. |title=Thomas Jefferson's Literary Commonplace Book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2wwABAAAQBAJ&pg=PA172|location=Princeton, NJ |publisher=Princeton University Press |page=172 |isbn=0691047200 |access-date=8 April 2015 }}</ref> They were proclaimed as a Celtic equivalent of the [[Classical antiquity|Classical]] writers such as [[Homer]]. "The genuine remains of Ossian&nbsp;... are in many respects of the same stamp as the ''Iliad''", was [[Henry David Thoreau|Thoreau]]'s opinion.<ref>Thoreau, Henry David. ''Thoreau: Collected Essays and Poems''. The Library of America. p. 141. {{ISBN|1-883011-95-7}}</ref> Many writers were influenced by the works, including [[Walter Scott]], and painters and composers chose Ossianic subjects.

The Hungarian national poet [[Sándor Petőfi]] wrote a poem entitled ''Homer and Ossian'', comparing the two authors, of which the first verse reads:
{{poemquote|
Oh where are you Hellenes and Celts?
Already you have vanished, like
Two cities drowning
In the waters of the deep.
Only the tips of towers stand out from the water,
Two tips of towers: Homer, Ossian.}}

Despite its doubtful authenticity, the Ossian cycle popularized [[Celtic mythology]] across Europe, and became one of the earliest and most popular texts that inspired [[romantic nationalism]] over the following century. European historians agree that the Ossian poems and their vision of mythical Scotland spurred the emergence of enlightened patriotism on the continent and played a foundational role in the making of modern European nationalism.<ref name=oxford-mythical/>

The cycle had less impact in the [[British Isles]]. [[Samuel Johnson]] held it up as "another proof of Scotch conspiracy in national falsehood", while the Irish objected to what they saw as Macpherson's misappropriation of the [[Fenian Cycle]] of [[Irish mythology]]. [[David Hume]] eventually withdrew his initial support of Macpherson and quipped that he could not accept the claimed authenticity of the poems even if "fifty bare-arsed Highlanders" vouched for it. By the early 19th century, the cycle came to play a limited role in Scottish patriotic rhetoric.<ref name=oxford-mythical/>