time with no better success. His school-room was low-roofed and damp, and the poor youth, confined for five or six hours a day in this unwholesome atmosphere, depressed by poverty and disappointment, soon lost health and spirits. He wrote his poem of 'Lochleven' at Forest Hill, but was at length forced to return to his father's cottage, which 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 Elegy,' 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.

The poems of Bruce were first given to the world by his collegefriend John Logan, in 1770, who warmly eulogised the character and talents of his brother poet. They were reprinted in 1784, and afterwards included in Anderson's edition of the poets. The late venerable and benevolent Principal Baird, in 1807, published an edition by subscription for the benefit of Bruce's mother, then a widow. In 1837, a complete edition of the poems was brought out, with a life of the author from original sources, by the Rev. William Mackelvie, Balgedie, Kinross-shire. 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 has taken 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, &c.

"The Last Day' is another poem by Bruce in blank verse, but is inferior to Lochleven' In poetical beauty and energy, as in biographical interest, his latest effort, the 'Elegy, must ever rank the first in his productions. With many weak lines and borrowed ideas, this poem 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.

"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 foss, 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.

Mr. D'Israeli, in his 'Calamities of Authors,' has included the name of JOHN LOGAN as one of those unfortunate men of genius whose life has been marked by disappointment and misfortune. He had undoubtedly formed to himself a high standard of literary excellence and ambition, to which he never attained; but there is no evidence to warrant the assertion that Logan died of a broken heart. He died of consumption at the age of forty, leaving a sum of £200. Logan was born at Soutra, in the parish of Fala, Mid-Lothian, in 1748. His father, a small farmer, educated him for the church, and, after he had obtained a license to preach, he distinguished himself so much by his pulpit eloquence, that he was appointed one of the ministers of South Leith. He held this charge from 1773 till December 1786. He 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; 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 '-an eloquent defence of the accused, and 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, 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 and passionate, full of piety and fervour.

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One act in the literary life of Logan we have already adverted tohis 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 wrote by different authors are inserted.' The best of these he claimed, and published afterwards as his own. Certain relations and friends of Bruce, indignant at his conduct, have since endeavoured to snatch this laurel from his brows. 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 senti ment,' 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 in 1781; the fact of his having shewn it in manuscript to several friends before its publication, and declared it to be his composition; and that, during his life, his claim to be the author was not disputed. In republishing the Ode, Logan made some corrections, such as an author was likely to make in a piece written by himself eleven or twelve years before. In 1873, Mr. David Laing, in a tract on the authorship of this ode, established Logan's claim beyond all dispute one of the many services to Scottish literature, which Mr. Laing during a long life has rendered. Apart from the ode' To the Cuckoo,' the best of Logan's productions are his verses on a 'Visit to the Country in Autumn,' his half-dramatic poem of The Lovers,' and his ballad stanzas on the Braes of Yarrow.' A vein of tenderness and moral sentiment runs through the whole, and his language is select and poetical. In some lines' On the Death of a Young Lady,' we have the following true and touching exclamation :

What tragic tears bedew the eye!
What deaths we suffer ere we die!
Our broken friendships we deplore,
And loves of youth that are no more!

No after-friendships e'er can raise
The endearments of our early days,
And ne'er the heart such fondness prove,
As when it first began to love,

To the Cuckoo.

The school-boy, wandering through the Our annual visit o'er the globe,

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 imita tion.-Note by Lord Mackenzie (son of the Man of Feeling') in Bruce's Poems by Rev. W. Mackelvie