John Logan, 1748–1788, a native of Fala, county of Edinburgh, minister of South Leith, 1773, displeased his parishioners by writing for the stage and by his intemperance, and removed to London in 1786, where he became a writer for the “English Review.” It is asserted that he reformed his habits before his death. 1. “Michael Bruce’s Poems,” 1770. Several pieces in this collection are by Logan and others, and some of Bruce’s are omitted…. 2. “Elements of the Philosophy of History,” Part I, 1781. 3. “Essay on the Manners of Asia,” 1781. 4. “Poems,” 1781–82. 5. “Runnimede; a Tragedy,” 1783. Founded on the history of Magna Charta. 6. “Review of the Principal Charges against Warren Hastings,” 1788. 7. “A View of Ancient History,” &c., 1788. 8. “Sermons,” 1790–91. Logan was a contributor to, and a reviser of, the Psalmody of the Church of Scotland, of which the collection of translations and paraphrases was first published in 1781.

Personal

  Mr. Logan, a clergyman of uncommon learning, taste, and ingenuity, but who cannot easily submit to the puritanical spirit of this country, quits his charge and proposes to settle in London, where he will probably exercise what may be called the trade of a man of letters. He has published a few poems, of which several have great merit, and which are probably not unknown to you. He has likewise published a tragedy, which I cannot say I admire in the least. He has another in manuscript, founded and almost translated from a French drama, which is much better. But the best of all his works which I have seen are some lectures upon universal history, which were read here some years ago, but which, notwithstanding they were approved and even admired by some of the best and most impartial judges, were run down by the prevalence of a hostile literary faction, to the leaders of which he had imprudently given some personal offence. Give me leave to recommend him most earnestly to your countenance and protection.

  From one of his executors, Mr. Donald Grant, who wrote the life prefixed to his poems, I heard of the state of his numerous MSS.; the scattered, yet warm embers of the unhappy bard. Several tragedies, and one on Mary Queen of Scots, abounding with all that domestic tenderness and poetic sensibility which formed the soft and natural feature of his muse; these, with minor poems, thirty lectures on the Roman History, and portions of a periodical paper, were the wrecks of genius! He resided here, little known out of a very private circle, and perished in his fortieth year, not of penury, but of a broken heart. Such noble and well-founded expectations of fortune and fame, all the plans of literary ambition overturned: His genius, with all its delicacy, its spirit, and its elegance, became a prey to that melancholy which constituted so large a portion of it.

  His connection with the stage was deemed improper in a clergyman. His literary pursuits interfered with his pastoral diligence; and, what was worse, he was constitutionally subject to fits of depression, from which he took refuge in inebriety. Whatever his irregularities were (for they have been differently described), he was obliged to compound for them, by resigning his flock, and retiring upon a small annuity. He came to London, where his principal literary employments were, furnishing articles for the English Review, and writing in vindication of Warren Hastings. He died at the age of forty, at his lodgings, in Marlborough-street. His Sermons, which were published two years after his death, have obtained considerable popularity.

  In the course of my literary researches I have been brought pretty near to Logan, by his own letters, by letters of contemporaries, by anecdotes, and other data, and know not that a more false life has ever been lived—the worst of all falsity, moreover, seeing it is a serving the devil while wearing Christ’s livery. It may be needful, some day, to reveal all, though personally I should prefer silence, save only where Bruce’s claims come in for defence.

  Whatever may have been the amount of Logan’s weaknesses or errors, they were of a kind, and in a degree, not unusual in the history of the sons of genius. Admitting that he was the victim of intemperance, even to a greater extent than what traditional stories of the usual cast have portrayed him, and admitting the lowering moral tendency of such a condition, yet to make it the ground of a charge of dishonourable conduct is not the part of an unbiased judge. We have already, in the life of his fellow-student Michael Bruce, referred to the charges brought against Logan’s character; and the kind of proceeding which we have condemned is unsparingly used to give—what we must admit to have been a most unfortunate and serious error of judgment on his part—a dishonourable character. But like most intemperate charges, it overreaches itself; for there is no evidence of Logan’s having contracted those habits for years after his being entrusted with Bruce’s manuscripts…. To deprive Logan of the credit of what he himself claimed as his own, on such evidence as has been produced on behalf of Bruce, would be yielding to clamour that which only can be given up on the most convincing proofs of Logan’s fraud.

  Logan was one of the most popular preachers of the time; his historical productions evince wide knowledge, comprehensive views, and a philosophic mind; his poetical versions of scripture are singularly felicitous, and the “Ode to the Cuckoo” was pronounced by Edmund Burke “the most beautiful lyric in our language.” In his better days he won the friendship and esteem of some of the most eminent clergymen of the time, and when he disappointed their hopes they made allowance for the temperament he had inherited.

General

  This elegant philosopher has impressed on all his works the seal of genius; and his posthumous compositions became even popular; he who had with difficulty escaped excommunication by Presbyters, left the world after his death two volumes of sermons, which breathe all that piety, morality, and eloquence admire. His unrevised lectures, published under the name of a person, one Rutherford, who had purchased the MS., were given to the world in “A View of Ancient History.” But one highly-finished composition he had himself published; it is a philosophical review of Despotism: Had the name of Gibbon been affixed to the title-page, its authenticity had not been suspected.

  A tithe of Logan’s talents would make ten Lord Woodhouselees.

  He has left little behind him; but that little (excepting the hymn taken from the Bible) is his own. It is purely the offspring of soft affections, tuning his verse to a correspondent softness. Neither the thoughts nor the expressions are borrowed from others; or prompted by study and reflection. But in saying this, all is said. He has none of the higher faculties of the poet. His only gem is the “Ode to the Cuckoo,” which procured him the honour of a visit from Burke…. His sermons are more poetical than his poems.

  His sermons are smooth and pleasing in composition, but never very forcible or striking. The same merits mark his verse, and the same limitations. It is sweet, but cloying. His mind was elegant, not powerful. Effeminacy of taste is perceptible in his work generally, and especially in the melodramatic tragedy of “Runnamede.” But even if the “Ode” is not his, he deserves a niche in memory as the author of the fine song, “The Braes of Yarrow,” which, although it owes much to the older and more exquisite “Willie drowned in Yarrow,” has likewise high merits of its own.

  One of the visits Burke paid in Edinburgh was to a charming poet, to whom fortune has been singularly unkind, not only treating him cruelly when alive, but instead of granting the usual posthumous reparation, treating him more cruelly after his death. I mean John Logan, the author of the “Ode to the Cuckoo,” which Burke thought the most beautiful lyric in the language. Logan was at the moment in the thick of his troubles. He had written a tragedy called “Runnymede,” which, though accepted by the management of Covent Garden, was prohibited by the Lord Chamberlain, who scented current politics in the bold speeches of the Barons of King John, but it was eventually produced in the Edinburgh theatre in 1783. Its production immediately involved the author, as one of the ministers of Leith, in difficulties with his parishioners and the ecclesiastical courts similar to those which John Home had encountered twenty years before, and the trouble ended in Logan resigning his charge in December, 1786, on a pension of £40 a year…. The lectures which Smith praises so highly were published in 1779, and are interesting as one of the first adventures in what was afterwards known as the philosophy of history. But his memory rests now on his poems, which Smith thought less of, and especially on his “Ode to the Cuckoo,” which he has been accused so often of stealing from his deceased friend, Michael Bruce, but to which his title has at last been put beyond all doubt by Mr. Small’s publication of a letter, written to Principal Baird in 1791, by Dr. Robertson of Dalmeny, who acted as joint editor with him of their common friend Bruce’s poems.

  Logan’s tragedy of “Runnimede,” like most of his authentic poetry, is lacking in force. His two volumes of “Sermons,” however, were recommended by Sir Walter Scott, and are still read. Certainly by far his finest poem is “The Braes of Yarrow,” though one verse, “She sought him east,” &c., is borrowed from the ancient ballad of “Willie drowned in Yarrow.”

  “The Cuckoo,” a poem well worth the sharp controversy waged over it by the respective friends of the two authors. There is nothing else in this period that rings so fresh and clear as this little ode. One stanza may be quoted to illustrate its beauty, its simplicity, and naturalness…. Logan’s other poems, though he has nothing equal to the cuckoo song in spontaneity and exquisite simplicity, are yet of real value. His “Braes of Yarrow” is an effective presentation of the ancient, sorrow-laden Yarrow motif. As is fitting in a ballad, the touches of description are of the briefest sort, but the forest, the bonny braes, and the sounding stream, are felt through all the plaintive story. “Ossian’s Hymn to the Sun” is a poetical paraphrase of the famous apostrophe in “Balclutha.” It has some fine lines, but is inferior in strength to the original.

  Another bird, the Cuckoo, acted up to its reputation by inspiring a good, though not consummate, copy of verses, which has been challenged by the champions of Bruce and Logan for both those writers. In such a quarrel, especially as the authorship is of infinitesimal importance, no wise man takes a side. Bruce died young, and certainly wrote some pleasing verse; Logan, his friend, literary executor, and (as one theory holds) supplanter, died in early middle age, and seems to have had rather more talent than conduct. But all the poets of the paragraph must rest their main claim to historic interest on the fact that they exemplify, and that they handed on, the vague poetic inspiration which was to take definite form in Burns.