Michael Bruce (1746–67) was born at Kinnesswood in Kinross-shire. His father, a poor weaver, trained his children to a knowledge of their letters and a deep sense of religious duty, and in the summer months Michael was put to herd cattle. His education suffered; but as poet he found his account in solitary communion with nature, amidst scenery overlooking Lochleven and its ruined castle. In his fifteenth year the boy was judged fit for college, and at this time a relation of his father left him a legacy of 200 merks Scots-£11, 2s. 2d. sterling. This sum the old weaver piously devoted to the education of his favourite son, who, enrolled in December 1762 a student at Edinburgh University, was soon distinguished for general proficiency and for taste in poetry. After three sessions at college, supported by parents, friends, and neighbours, he engaged to teach a school at Gairney Bridge on a salary of about 11 per annum. He completed his arts course in 1765, and entered the Divinity Hall in connection with the Burgher, or Associate, Synod, intending to become a minister. He obtained another school at Forest Mill near Tillicoultry in 1766, and taught for a time under equally depressing conditions. His schoolroom was low-roofed and damp, and the poor youth, oppressed by poverty and disappointment, lost health and spirits. He wrote his poem of Lochleven at Forest Mill, but was at length forced to return to his father's cottage, a victim of consumption. With death full in his view he wrote his Elegy his best poem if we except the debated Cuckoo, whose authorship is discussed in the next article, where the poem is quoted; and he died on 5th July 1767, aged twenty-one.

In

His poems were published in 1770 by his college friend John Logan, who warmly eulogised Bruce's character and talents. Anderson's British Poets (1794) contained eleven of Bruce's poems. 1807 Principal Baird published an edition by subscription for the benefit of Bruce's mother, then a widow. In 1837 a complete edition of the poems was issued, with a Life of the author, from original sources, by Mr Mackelvie, a Kinross-shire minister. The pieces left by Bruce have all the marks of youth-a style only half-formed and immature, and resemblances to other poets so close and frequent that the reader is constantly stumbling on some familiar image or expression. In Lochleven, a descriptive poem in blank verse, he obviously took Thomson as his model. The opening is a paraphrase of the commencement of Thomson's Spring, and epithets taken from the Seasons occur throughout the whole poem, with traces of Milton, Ossian, and many other familiar poets. And it is argued that considerable passages are additions by Logan. The Last Day, in blank verse, is inferior to Lochleven. Other poems are a pastoral, a pastoral song, a rhymed fable, 'an historical ballad' (on Sir James the Ross), and an 'anacreontic' not to speak of

some or all of the hymns or Scripture paraphrases printed as Logan's, including The Complaint of Nature, given in the next article. The Elegy has many weak lines and borrowed ideas (thus the odd locution shut of eve' is straight from Blair, page 306), but attracts the reader and stirs sympathetic admiration for the young Christian philosopher who could thus describe the cheering aspects of reviving nature in the certain expectation of his own speedy dissolution.

Elegy Written in Spring.

'Tis past the iron North has spent his rage; Stern Winter now resigns the lengthening day; The stormy howlings of the winds assuage,

And warm o'er ether western breezes play. Of genial heat and cheerful light the source, From southern climes, beneath another sky, The sun, returning, wheels his golden course: Before his beams all noxious vapours fly.

Far to the north grim Winter draws his train,

To his own clime, to Zembla's frozen shore; Where, throned on ice, he holds eternal reign;

Where whirlwinds madden, and where tempests roar. Loosed from the bands of frost, the verdant ground Again puts on her robe of cheerful green, Again puts forth her flowers; and all around Smiling, the cheerful face of spring is seen. Behold! the trees new deck their withered boughs; Their ample leaves, the hospitable plane, The taper elm, and lofty ash disclose;

The blooming hawthorn variegates the scene. The lily of the vale, of flowers the queen,

Puts on the robe she neither sewed nor spun ;
The birds on ground, or on the branches green,
Hop to and fro, and glitter in the sun.

Soon as o'er eastern hills the morning peers,
From her low nest the tufted lark upsprings;
And, cheerful singing, up the air she steers;
Still high she mounts, still loud and sweet she sings.
On the green furze, clothed o'er with golden blooms
That fill the air with fragrance all around,
The linnet sits, and tricks his glossy plumes,

While o'er the wild his broken notes resound.
While the sun journeys down the western sky,
Along the greensward, marked with Roman mound,
Beneath the blithsome shepherd's watchful eye,
The cheerful lambkins dance and frisk around.
Now is the time for those who wisdom love,

Who love to walk in Virtue's flowery road,
Along the lovely paths of spring to rove,
And follow Nature up to Nature's God.
Thus Zoroaster studied Nature's laws;

Thus Socrates, the wisest of mankind;
Thus heaven-taught Plato traced the Almighty cause,
And left the wondering multitude behind.
Thus Ashley gathered academic bays;

Thus gentle Thomson, as the seasons roll, Taught them to sing the great Creator's praise, And bear their poet's name from pole to pole.

Thus have I walked along the dewy lawn;

My frequent foot the blooming wild hath worn ; Before the lark I've sung the beauteous dawn,

And gathered health from all the gales of morn.

And, even when winter chilled the aged year,
I wandered lonely o'er the hoary plain :
Though frosty Boreas warned me to forbear,
Boreas, with all his tempests, warned in vain.

Then, sleep my nights, and quiet blessed my days;
I feared no loss, my mind was all my store;
No anxious wishes e'er disturbed my ease;

Heaven gave content and health-I asked no more.

Now spring returns: but not to me returns

The vernal joy my better years have known; Dim in my breast life's dying taper burns,

And all the joys of life with health are flown. Starting and shivering in the inconstant wind, Meagre and pale, the ghost of what I was, Beneath some blasted tree I lie reclined,

And count the silent moments as they pass :

The winged moments, whose unstaying speed
No art can stop, or in their course arrest ;
Whose flight shall shortly count me with the dead,
And lay me down in peace with them at rest.
Oft morning dreams presage approaching fate;
And morning dreams, as poets tell, are true.
Led by pale ghosts, I enter Death's dark gate,
And bid the realms of light and life adieu.

I hear the helpless wail, the shriek of woe;
I see the muddy wave, the dreary shore,
The sluggish streams that slowly creep below,
Which mortals visit, and return no more.
Farewell, ye blooming fields! ye cheerful plains!
Enough for me the churchyard's lonely mound,
Where melancholy with still silence reigns,

And the rank grass waves o'er the cheerless ground.

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 (1748-88) was included by Isaac D'Israeli, in his Calamities of Authors, amongst unfortunate men of genius. Logan had undoubtedly ambitions he never realised; but there is nothing to warrant the assertion that he died of a broken heart. Born at Soutra in East Lothian, the son of a small farmer, who educated him for the ministry, Logan, after he had finished his studies at Edinburgh, been duly licensed' to preach, and been for a time tutor at Ulbster to the afterwards famous Sir John Sinclair, was in 1773 appointed one of the ministers of South Leith. Under the auspices of Principal Robertson and Dr Hugh Blair, he read a course of lectures in Edinburgh,

an outline of which he published in 1781 as The Elements of the Philosophy of History; and in 1782 he printed one of his lectures on the Manners and Governments of Asia. The same year he published his poems, and in 1783 Runnamede, a The tragedy on the signing of Magna Charta. play was acted in Edinburgh, but only once-on account of its political references, it was said. His parishioners disapproved this exercise of his talents, and unfortunately Logan had lapsed into irregular and dissipated habits. The consequence was that in 1786 he resigned his charge on receiving a small annuity, and settled in London, where he died. In London, Logan was a contributor to the English Review, and wrote a pamphlet on the Charges against Warren Hastings -an eloquent defence and counter-attack on his accusers-which led to the trial of Stockdale the publisher, and to one of the most memorable of Erskine's speeches. Among Logan's manuscripts were found several unfinished tragedies, twenty-two lectures on ancient history, portions of a periodical work, and a collection of fervid sermons, two volumes of which were published by his executors. By a perverse fate, what appear to have been Logan's lectures were printed (2 vols. 1788-93), as his own, under the title of A View of Antient History, by Dr William Rutherford, who was headmaster of a school at Uxbridge.

Logan it was who in 1770 published (see the preceding page) the poems of his dead college friend Michael Bruce. In doing so he exercised his editorial discretion by not printing several of the pieces amongst Bruce's manuscripts, as well as by making extensive alterations on and additions to Bruce's verses; and, as he states in his preface, to make up a miscellany, poems wrote by different authors are inserted.' The best of these he afterwards claimed himself, and published as his own in 1781. With respect to the vexed question of the authorship of the ode To the Cuckoo-which Burke admired so much that on visiting Edinburgh he sought out Logan to compliment him-the evidence seems to be as follows: In favour of Logan, there is the open publication of the ode under his own name in 1781; 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 Logan's life his claim to be the author was not disputed. In republishing the ode, Logan made. corrections such as an author was likely to make in a piece written by himself eleven or twelve years before. In 1873 a careful and conscientious sifter of evidence, David Laing, in a tract on the authorship of this ode, defended Logan's claim ; so did Dr John Small (British and Foreign Evangelical Review, 1877) and the Rev. Robert Small (ib. 1879); but Bruce's authorship was strenuously asserted by Dr Mackelvie (1837) and Dr A. B. Grosart (1865-86). There are certainly some arguments in support of Bruce's claim.

The question has not been absolutely settled, and perhaps hardly admits of demonstrative proof. It counts against Logan that he used in his sermons sentences or passages from Blair, Sherlock, Jeremiah Seed, and perhaps Zollikofer as translated. And it should be remembered that questions of literary property were not in Logan's century so strictly regarded as now. It is impossible to settle the authorship of some of the things by Swift and Arbuthnot and Pope. Great poets do not now incorporate with their own works, as Thomson did, passages by their friends; Mallet may have considerably altered and thought he had a claim to 'Rule Britannia,' though he did not write the first draft; and Erasmus Darwin unhesitatingly incorporated with the very opening of his Botanic Garden without remark, without her consent, and against her wish, a long passage that had already been published as a poem by his friend Miss Seward. Apart from the ode To the Cuckoo, the best of Logan's things are his verses on a Visit to the Country in Autumn, his halfdramatic poem of The Lovers, and his fine ballad stanzas on the Braes of Yarrow. Nine of the best of the Paraphrases adopted by the Church of Scotland in 1781, in several cases 'improved ' versions of older hymns by Doddridge and others, are in their present shape attributed to him, but these also have been claimed by some for Michael Bruce.

Logan's principles of the philosophy of history -though in the end the book degenerates into jottings on the salient features of the history of Egypt, Persia, Sparta, Athens, Macedonia, and Rome-are sufficiently modern or 'advanced' to warrant a quotation. At the outset he insists that the physical causes are those qualities of the soil and climate which work insensibly on the temper,' and 'delivers the opinion' 'that the original character of nations arises chiefly from physical causes, and that the subsequent changes are almost entirely owing to moral.' He recognises three stages in early social development: savages who have no permanent possessions; barbarous tribes who have adopted the idea of permanent possession in their flocks and herds, but who, as they still continue to migrate, have no private property in land;' and the stage of 'nations when they forsake their roving life and, settling in the soil, appropriate land.'

The arrangements and improvements which take place in human affairs result not from the efforts of individuals, but from a movement of the whole society.

From want of attention to this principle, history hath often degenerated into the panegyric of single men and the worship of names. Lawgivers are recorded, but who makes mention of the people? When, moved with curiosity, we enquire into the causes of the singular institutions which prevailed at Sparta, at Athens, or Rome, historians think it sufficient to mention the names of Lycurgus, Solon, or Romulus. They seem to have believed that forms of government were established

with as much ease as theories of government were written. Such visionary systems are foreign to human affairs. No constitution is formed by a concert: no government is copied from a plan. Sociability and policy are natural to mankind. In the progress of society, instincts turn into arts, and original principles are converted into actual establishments. When an inequality of possessions takes place, the few that are opulent contend for power, the many defend their rights from this struggle of parties a form of government is established.

Illustrations of this observation from ancient and modern states.

The laws of a nation are derived from the same origin with their government.

Rising, in this manner, from society, all human improvements appear in their proper place, not as separate and detached articles, but as the various though regular phenomena of one great system. Poetry, philosophy, the fine arts, national manners and customs, result from the situation and spirit of a people.

All that legislators, patriots, philosophers, statesmen, and kings can do, is to give a direction to that stream which is for ever flowing.

It is this that renders history, in its proper form, interesting to all mankind, as its object is not merely to delineate the projects of princes or the intrigues of statesmen, but to give a picture of society and represent the character and spirit of nations.

Similar situations produce similar appearances; and, where the state of society is the same, nations will resemble one another.

The want of attention to this hath filled the world with infinite volumes. The most remote resemblances in language, customs, or manners have suggested the idea of deriving one nation from another.

Nature directs the use of all the faculties that she hath given; in favourable circumstances every animal unfolds its powers; and man is the same being over the whole world.

Illustrations both from savage and civilized nations. Man is one animal; and, where the same situations occur, human nature is the same.

Hence the foundation of everything is in nature; politics is a science; and there is a system in human affairs.

It is peculiar to the human race that the species improves as well as the individual.

Hence a noble field presents itself to the philosophical historian, to trace the rise and progress of society and the history of civilization.

All nations have been rude before they were refined. The commencement of history is from the wood and the wilderness. Mankind appear everywhere, at first, a weak and infant species; and the most celebrated nations trace back their origin to a few wandering

tribes.

The early condition of our species, therefore, is a subject both of curiosity and importance. There are no records, however, of such a state. The youth of the society, like that of the individual, passes away unperceived.

Happily for the historian, the discovery of America has supplied this defect.

The history of the aborigines of America is curious;

and we deliver it not as the annals of the new world, but as it belongs to the antiquities of mankind, and delineates the picture of all nations in the rude state.

To the Cuckoo.

Hail, beauteous stranger of the grove!
Thou messenger of Spring!
Now Heaven repairs thy rural seat,

And woods thy welcome sing.

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?
Delightful visitant ! with thee

I hail the time of flowers,

And hear the sound of music sweet

From birds among the bowers.

The school-boy, wandering through the wood
To pull the primrose gay,

Starts, the new voice of Spring to hear,
And imitates thy lay.

What time the pea puts on the bloom,

Thou fliest thy vocal vale,

An annual guest in other lands,
Another Spring to hail.

Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,
Thy sky is ever clear;

Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No Winter in thy year!

Oh, could I fly, I'd fly with thee !
We'd make, with joyful wing,
Our annual visit o'er the globe,
Companions of the Spring.

The third line of the fourth verse originally stood:
'Starts thy curious voice to hear,'

which was doubtless altered by Logan as defective in quantity, though curious' has been defended as truer to fact than 'new.'

The Complaint of Nature.

'Few are thy days, and full of woe,

O man, of woman born!

Thy doom is written, "Dust thou art,
And shalt to dust return.'

'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
Thy sprightly step attends;
But soon the tempest howls hehind,
And the dark night descends.
'Before its splendid hour the cloud

Comes o'er the beam of light;
A pilgrim in a weary land,
Man tarries but a night.

'Behold! sad emblem of thy state,

The flowers that paint the field ;

Or trees that crown the mountain's brow, And boughs and blossoms yield.

'When chill the blast of Winter blows,

Away the Summer flies,

The flowers resign their sunny robes,

And all their beauty dies.

'Nipt by the year the forest fades;

And, shaking to the wind,

The leaves toss to and fro, and streak The wilderness behind.

'The Winter past, reviving flowers Anew shall paint the plain,

The woods shall hear the voice of Spring And flourish green again.

'But man departs this earthly scene,
Ah! never to return!

No second Spring shall e'er revive
The ashes of the urn.

'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 Its torrents to the main,

The waters lost can ne'er recall
From that abyss again.

'The days, the years, the ages, dark
Descending down to night,
Can never, never be redeemed
Back to the gates of light.

'So man departs the living scene,

To night's perpetual gloom; The voice of morning ne'er shall break The slumbers of the tomb.

'Where are our fathers? Whither gone The mighty men of old?

The patriarchs, prophets, princes, kings, In sacred books enrolled?

'Gone to the resting-place of man,

The everlasting home,

Where ages past have gone before, Where future ages come.'

Thus nature poured the wail of woe,
And urged her earnest cry;
Her voice, in agony extreme,
Ascended to the sky.

The Almighty heard: then from his throne
In majesty he rose ;

And from the heaven, that opened wide, His voice in mercy flows:

'When mortal man resigns his breath,

And falls a clod of clay,

The soul immortal wings its flight

To never-setting day.

'Prepared of old for wicked men

The bed of torment lies; The just shall enter into bliss Immortal in the skies.'

The Braes of Yarrow.

'Thy braes were bonny, Yarrow stream!
When first on them I met my lover;
Thy braes how dreary, Yarrow stream!
When now thy waves his body cover!
For ever now, O Yarrow stream!

Thou art to me a stream of sorrow;
For never on thy banks shall I

Behold my love, the flower of Yarrow.

'He promised me a milk-white steed, To bear me to his father's bowers; He promised me a little page,

To 'squire me to his father's towers; He promised me a wedding-ring,

The wedding-day was fix'd to-morrow ;Now he is wedded to his grave,

Alas, his watery grave in Yarrow !

'Sweet were his words when last we met;
My passion I as freely told him!
Clasp'd in his arms, I little thought
That I should never more behold him!
Scarce was he gone, I saw his ghost;

It vanish'd with a shriek of sorrow;
Thrice did the water-wraith ascend,

And gave a doleful groan through Yarrow.

'His mother from the window look'd, With all the longing of a mother;

His little sister weeping walk'd

The green-wood path to meet her brother: They sought him east, they sought him west, They sought him all the forest thorough; They only saw the cloud of night,

They only heard the roar of Yarrow.

'No longer from thy window look,
Thou hast no son, thou tender mother!
No longer walk, thou lovely maid!

Alas, thou hast no more a brother!
No longer seek him east or west,

And search no more the forest thorough; For, wandering in the night so dark,

He fell a lifeless corse in Yarrow.

'The tear shall never leave my cheek,

No other youth shall be my marrow;

I'll seek thy body in the stream,

And then with thee I'll sleep in Yarrow.' The tear did never leave her cheek,

No other youth became her marrow; She found his body in the stream, And now with him she sleeps in Yarrow.

From 'Runnamede.'

He is a traitor to his native land,

A traitor to mankind who in a cause

That down the course of time will fire the world,
Rides not upon the lightning of the sky
To save his country. . .

The voice of freedom's not a still, small voice; 'Tis in the fire, the thunder and the storm

The goddess Liberty delights to dwell.
If rightly I foresee Britannia's fate
The hour of peril is the halcyon hour;
The shock of parties brings her best repose,
Like her wild waves, when working in a storm,
That foam and roar and mingle earth and heaven,

Yet guard the island which they seem to shake. Amongst the poems reprinted, in whole or in part, after the Psalter in Scottish Bibles as 'paraphrases' or 'hymns' are the wellknown ones, O God of Abraham [Bethel] by whose hand,' 'Few are thy days and full of woe' (abridged from the poem quoted above), 'O happy is the man who hears,' 'Behold the mountain of the Lord,' and 'Where high the heavenly temple stands.' These are all amongst the nine hymns published in 1781 as by Logan. 'O God of Bethel' is, as Lord Selborne said, Dr Doddridge's, 'rewritten and certainly improved by Logan. And it should be noted that the most convinced defender of Logan's right to most of the disputed poems insists that Bruce must have written something on the lines of The Complaint of Nature,' though as it stands it is largely or mostly Logan's, the artistic rounding off being certainly his. Mr D. J. Maclagan in The Scottish Paraphrases (1889) takes Logan's side; Dr Julian in his great Dictionary of Hymnology (1892) follows Grosart.

Nathaniel Cotton (1705-88) wrote Visions in Verse, for the Entertainment and Instruction of Younger Minds, which are, on the whole, more likely to instruct than to amuse. He was born in London, the son of a Levant merchant, and as a medical practitioner at St Albans was distinguished for his skill in the treatment of mental disorders. Cowper, a patient in Cotton's happily named 'Collegium Insanorum,' bears evidence to his 'well-known humanity and sweetness of temper.' Both in his nine Visions (Friendship, Happiness, Slander, Marriage, Death, &c.) and in his seven Fables ("The Scholar and the Cat,' 'The Snail and the Gardener,' &c.) he imitated Gay in verse and manner, though, as a contemporary said, 'with greater forcibleness of the moral spirit.' There are also tales, epitaphs, imitations, and miscellanies, in some of which there are anticipations of the nineteenth-century spirit, though in eighteenth-century words.

To Children listening to a Lark.
See the lark prunes his active wings,
Rises to heaven, and soars, and sings.
His morning hymns, his mid-day lays,
Are one continued song of praise.
He speaks his Maker all he can,
And shames the silent tongue of man.
When the declining orb of light
Reminds him of approaching night,
His warbling vespers swell his breast,
And as he sings he sinks to rest.

Shall birds instructive lessons teach,
And we be deaf to what they preach?
No, ye dear nestlings of my heart,
Go, act the wiser songster's part.
Spurn your warm couch at early dawn,
And with your God begin the morn.
To Him your grateful tribute pay
Through every period of the day.
To Him your evening songs direct;
His eye shall watch, His arm protect.
Though darkness reigns, He's with you still,
Then sleep, my babes, and fear no ill.

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