man, and trained all his children to a knowledge of afterwards included in Anderson's edition of the their letters, and a deep sense of religious duty. In poets. The late venerable and benevolent Principal the summer months Michael was put out to herd Baird, in 1807, published an edition by subscription cattle. His education was retarded by this employ- for the benefit of Bruce's mother, then a widow. In ment; but his training as a poet was benefited by 1837, a complete edition of the poems was brought solitary communion with nature, amidst scenery out, with a life of the author from original sources, that overlooked Lochleven and its fine old ruined by the Rev. William Mackelvie, Balgedie, Kinrosscastle. When he had arrived at his fifteenth year, shire. In this full and interesting memoir ample the poet was judged fit for college, and at this time reparation is made to the injured shade of Michael a relation of his father died, leaving him a legacy of Bruce for any neglect or injustice done to his poetical 200 merks Scots, or £11, 2s. 2d. sterling. This sum fame by his early friend Logan. Had Bruce lived, the old man piously devoted to the education of his it is probable he would have taken a high place favourite son, who proceeded with it to Edinburgh, among our national poets. He was gifted with the and was enrolled a student of the university. Michael requisite enthusiasm, fancy, and love of nature. was soon distinguished for his proficiency, and for There was a moral beauty in his life and character his taste for poetry. Having been three sessions at which would naturally have expanded itself in college, supported by his parents and some kind poetical composition. The pieces he has left have friends and neighbours, Bruce engaged to teach a all the marks of youth; a style only half-formed school at Gairney Bridge, where he received for his and immature, and resemblances to other poets, so labours about £11 per annum! He afterwards re- close and frequent, that the reader is constantly moved to Forest Hill, near Alloa, where he taught stumbling on some familiar image or expression. for some time with no better success. His school-In Lochleven,' a descriptive poem in blank verse, he room was low-roofed and damp, and the poor youth, has taken Thomson as his model. The opening is confined for five or six hours a-day in this unwhole- a paraphrase of the commencement of Thomson's some atmosphere, depressed by poverty and disap- Spring, and epithets taken from the Seasons occur pointment, soon lost health and spirits. He wrote throughout the whole poem, with traces of Milton, his poem of Lochleven at Forest Hill, but was at Ossian &c. The following passage is the most orilength forced to return to his father's cottage, which ginal and pleasing in the poem :-he never again left. A pulmonary complaint had settled on him, and he was in the last stage of consumption. With death full in his view, he wrote his Ode to Spring, the finest of all his productions. He was pious and cheerful to the last, and died on the 5th of July 1767, aged twenty-one years and three months. His Bible was found upon his pillow, marked down at Jer. xxii. 10, Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan him.' So blameless a life could not indeed be contemplated without pleasure, but its premature termination must have been a heavy blow to his aged parents, who had struggled in their poverty to nurture his youthful genius. [A Rural Picture.] Now sober Industry, illustrious power! Fair from his hand behold the village rise, And backward, through the gloom of ages past, Encircled with her swains and rosy nymphs, With mirth and music. Even the mendicant, Bowbent with age, that on the old gray stone, Sole sitting, suns him in the public way, Feels his heart leap, and to himself he sings. The conclusion of the poem gives us another picture of rural life, with a pathetic glance at the poet's own condition : [Virtue and Happiness in the Country.] How blest the man who, in these peaceful plains, Of rural life, he dwells; and with him dwells The silent path of life. Learned, but not fraught Thus sung the youth, amid unfertile wilds The Last Day is another poem by Bruce in blank verse, but is inferior to Lochleven.' The want of originality is more felt on a subject exhausted by Milton, Young, and Blair; but even in this, as in his other works, the warmth of feeling and graceful freedom of expression which characterise Bruce are seen and felt. In poetical beauty and energy, as in biographical interest, his latest effort, the Elegy, must ever rank the first in his productions. With some weak lines and borrowed ideas, this poem has an air of strength and ripened maturity that powerfully impresses the reader, and leaves him to wonder at the fortitude of the youth, who, in strains of such sensibility and genius, could describe the cheerful appearances of nature, and the certainty of his own speedy dissolution. Elegy Written in Spring. Far to the north grim Winter draws his train, roar. Loosed from the bands of frost, the verdant ground Soon as o'er eastern hills the morning peers, While the sun journeys down the western sky, And follow Nature up to Nature's God. Thus Socrates, the wisest of mankind; Thus gentle Thomson, as the seasons roll, Boreas, with all his tempests, warned in vain. Heaven gave content and health-I asked no more. Starting and shivering in the inconstant wind, I hear the helpless wail, the shriek of wo; There let me wander at the shut of eve, When sleep sits dewy on the labourer's eyes: The world and all its busy follies leave, And talk with Wisdom where my Daphnis lies. There let me sleep, forgotten in the clay, When death shall shut these weary aching eyes; Rest in the hopes of an eternal day, Till the long night is gone, and the last morn arise. JOHN LOGAN. and passionate, full of piety and fervour, and must have been highly impressive when delivered. One act in the literary life of Logan we have already adverted to-his publication of the poems of Michael Bruce. His conduct as an editor cannot be justified. He left out several pieces by Bruce, and, as he states in his preface, 'to make up a miscellany,' poems by different authors were inserted. The best of these he claimed, and published afterwards as his own. The friends of Bruce, indignant at his conduct, have since endeavoured to snatch this laurel from his brows, and considerable uncertainty hangs over the question. With respect to the most valuable piece in the collection, the Ode to the Cuckoo-'magical stanzas,' says D'Israeli, and all will echo the praise, of picture, melody, and sentiment,' and which Burke admired so much, that on visiting Edinburgh, he sought out Logan to compliment him-with respect to this beautiful effusion of fancy and feeling, the evidence seems to be as follows:-In favour of Logan, there is the open publication of the ode under his own name; the fact of his having shown it in manuscript to several friends before its publication, and declared it to be his composition; and that, during the whole of his life, his claim to be the author was not disputed. On the other hand, in favour of Bruce, there is the oral testimony of his relations and friends, that they always understood him to be the author; and the written evidence of Dr Davidson, Professor of Natural and Civil History, Aberdeen, that he saw a copy of the ode in the possession of a friend of Bruce, Mr Bickerton, who assured him it was in the handwriting of Bruce; that this copy was signed' Michael Bruce,' and below it were written the words, 'You will think I might have been better employed than Mr D'Israeli, in his Calamities of Authors,' has writing about a gowk'-[Anglice, cuckoo.] It is included the name of JOHN LOGAN as one of those unfavourable to the case of Logan, that he retained unfortunate men of genius whose life has been some of the manuscripts of Bruce, and his conduct marked by disappointment and misfortune. He throughout the whole affair was careless and unsahad undoubtedly formed to himself a high standard tisfactory. Bruce's friends also claim for him some of literary excellence and ambition, to which he of the hymns published by Logan as his own, and never attained; but there is no evidence to warrant they show that the unfortunate young bard had the assertion that Logan died of a broken heart. applied himself to compositions of this kind, though From one source of depression and misery he was none appeared in his works as published by Logan. happily exempt: though he died at the early age The truth here seems to be, that Bruce was the of forty, he left behind him a sum of £600. Logan founder, and Logan the perfecter, of these exquisite was born at Soutra, in the parish of Fala, Mid- devotional strains: the former supplied stanzas Lothian, in 1748. His father, a small farmer, edu- which the latter extended into poems, imparting to cated him for the church, and, after he had obtained the whole a finished elegance and beauty of diction a license to preach, he distinguished himself so which certainly Bruce does not seem to have been much by his pulpit eloquence, that he was appointed capable of giving. Without adverting to the dis one of the ministers of South Leith. He after-puted ode, the best of Logan's productions are his wards read a course of lectures on the Philosophy of History in Edinburgh, the substance of which he published in 1781; and next year he gave to the public one of his lectures entire on the Government of Asia. The same year he published his poems, which were well received; and in 1783 he produced a tragedy called Runnimede, founded on the signing of Magna Charta. His parishioners were opposed to such an exercise of his talents, and unfortunately Logan had lapsed into irregular and dissipated habits. The consequence was, that he resigned his charge on receiving a small annuity, and proceeded to London, where he resided till his death in December 1788. During his residence in London, Logan was a contributor to the English Review, and wrote a pamphlet on the Charges Against Warren Hastings, which attracted some notice. Among his manuscripts were found several unfinished tragedies, thirty lectures on Roman history, portions of a periodical work, and a collection of sermons, from which two volumes were selected and published by his executors. The sermons are warm verses on a Visit to the Country in Autumn, his half What tragic tears bedew the eye! To the Cuckoo. Hail, beauteous stranger of the grove! 49 What time the daisy decks the green, Thy certain voice we hear; Hast thou a star to guide thy path, Or mark the rolling year? I hail the time of flowers, The schoolboy, wandering through the wood Starts, the new voice of spring to hear,* What time the pea puts on the bloom, Sweet bird thy bower is ever green, O could I fly, I'd fly with thee! [Written in a Visit to the Country in Autumn.] 'Tis past! no more the Summer blooms! Behold congenial Autumn comes, What time thy holy whispers breathe, And twilight consecrates the floods; O let me wander through the sounding woods! Ah! well-known streams!-ah! wonted groves, The wild-flower strown on Summer's bier, Dissolve the soul, and draw the tender tear! Alas! the hospitable hall, Where youth and friendship played, The charm is vanished from the vales; A stranger to his native bowers: No more Arcadian mountains bloom, The fancied Eden fades with all its flowers! Companions of the youthful scene, *This line originally stood 'Starts thy curious voice to hear,' which was probably altered by Logan as defective in quantity. 'Curious may be a Scotticism, but it is felicitous. It marks the unusual resemblance of the note of the cuckoo to the human voice, the cause of the start and imitation which follow. Whereas the "new voice of spring" is not true; for many voices in spring precede that of the cuckoo, and it is not peculiar or striking, nor does it connect either with the start or imitation.' -Note by Lord Mackenzie (son of the Man of Feeling') in Bruce's Poems, by Rev. W. Mackelvie. Long-exiled from your native clime, I mourned the linnet-lover's fate, Condemned the widowed hours to wail: Or while the mournful vision rose, I sought to weep for imaged woes, Alas! misfortune's cloud unkind All human beauty blast! The wrath of nature smites our bowers, And promised fruits and cherished flowers, The hopes of life in embryo sweeps; Pale o'er the ruins of his prime, And desolate before his time, In silence sad the mourner walks and weeps! And friendship's covenant fails! The bleeding shade, the unlaid ghost! Their chequered leaves the branches shed; They sadly sigh that Winter's near: Nor will I court Lethean streams, The sorrowing sense to steep; Nor drink oblivion of the themes On which I love to weep. Belated oft by fabled rill, While nightly o'er the hallowed hill Aerial music seems to mourn; I'll listen Autumn's closing strain; Then woo the walks of youth again, And pour my sorrows o'er the untimely urn! Complaint of Nature. Few are thy days and full of wo, Thy doom is written, dust thou art, Determined are the days that fly Successive o'er thy head; The numbered hour is on the wing That lays thee with the dead. Alas! the little day of life Is shorter than a span; Yet black with thousand hidden ills To miserable man. Gay is thy morning, flattering hope Behold! sad emblem of thy state, The flowers that paint the field; When chill the blast of Winter blows, Away the Summer flies, The leaves toss to and fro, and streak The Winter past, reviving flowers The woods shall hear the voice of Spring, But man departs this earthly scene, No second Spring shall e'er revive The inexorable doors of death What hand can e'er unfold? Who from the cerements of the tomb Can raise the human mould? The mighty flood that rolls along The waters lost can ne'er recall From that abyss again. The days, the years, the ages, dark So man departs the living scene, Where are our fathers! Whither gone "The patriarchs, prophets, princes, kings, Gone to the resting-place of man, Thus nature poured the wail of wo, The Almighty heard: then from his throne And from the Heaven, that opened wide, 'When mortal man resigns his breath, The above hymn has been claimed for Michael Bruce by Mr Mackelvie, his biographer, on the faith of internal evidence,' because two of the stanzas resemble a fragment in the handwriting of Bruce. We subjoin the stanzas and the fragment: When chill the blast of winter blows, The flowers resign their sunny robes, Nipt by the year the forest fades, The leaves toss to and fro, and streak The wilderness behind. The hoar-frost glitters on the ground, the frequent leaf falls from the wood, and tosses to and fro down on the wind. The summer is gone with all his flowers; summer, the season of the muses; yet not the more cease I to wander where the muses haunt near spring or shadowy grove, or sunny hill. It was on a calm morning, while yet the darkness strove with the doubtful twilight, I rose and walked out under the opening eyelids of the morn.' If the originality of a poet is to be questioned on the ground of such resemblances as the above, what modern is safe? The images in both pieces are common to all descriptive poets. Bruce's Ossianic fragment is patched with expressions from Milton, which are neither marked as quotations nor printed as poetry. The reader will easily recollect the following:Yet not the more Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt Together both, ere the high lawns appeared THOMAS WARTON. Lycidas. The Wartons, like the Beaumonts, were a poetical race. Thomas, the historian of English poetry, was the second son of Dr Warton of Magdalen college, Oxford, who was twice chosen Professor of Poetry by his university, and who wrote some pleasing verses, half scholastic and half sentimental. A sonnet by the elder Warton is worthy being transcribed, for its strong family likeness: [Written after seeing Windsor Castle.] From beauteous Windsor's high and storied halls, The poetry-professor died in 1745. His tastes, his love of poetry, and of the university, were continued. by his son Thomas, born in 1728. At sixteen, Thomas Warton was entered of Trinity college. He began early to write verses, and his Pleasures of Melancholy, published when he was nineteen, gave a promise of excellence which his riper productions did not fulfil. Having taken his degree, Warton 233636 |