Of them, who wrapt in earth are cold, For many a tender thought is due. Why else the o'ergrown paths of time, Why seeks he with unwearied toil, Through Death's dim walks to urge his way, Reclaim his long-asserted spoil, And lead Oblivion into day? 'Tis nature prompts by toil or fear, Unmoved to range through Death's domain ; The tender parent loves to hear Her children's story told again! A Farewell Hymn to the Valley of Irwan. Farewell, the fields of Irwan's vale, My infant years where Fancy led, And soothed me with the western gale, Her wild dreams waving round my head, While the blithe blackbird told his tale. Farewell, the fields of Irwan's vale! The primrose on the valley's side, The green thyme on the mountain's head, The wanton rose, the daisy pied, The wilding's blossom blushing red; No longer I their sweets inhale. How oft, within yon vacant shade, Has evening closed my careless eye! Yet still, within yon vacant grove, And watch the wave that winds away; JOHN SCOTT. JOHN SCOTT (1730-1783) was our only Quaker poet till Bernard Barton graced the order with a sprig of laurel. Scott was the son of a draper in London, who retired to Amwell, in Hertfordshire, Ode on Hearing the Drum. I hate that drum's discordant sound, Of tawdry lace, and glittering arms; MICHAEL BRUCE. His MICHAEL BRUCE was born at Kinnesswood, parish of Portmoak, county of Kinross, on the 27th of March 1746. His father was a humble tradesman, a weaver. The dreariest poverty and obscurity hung over the poet's infancy, but the elder Bruce was a good and pious man, and trained his children to a knowledge of their letters, and a deep sense of religious duty. In the summer months, Michael was put out to herd cattle. education was retarded by this employment; but his training as a poet was benefited by solitary communion with nature, amidst scenery that overlooked Lochleven and its fine old ruined castle. When he had arrived at his fifteenth year, the poet was judged fit for college, and at this time a relation of his father died, leaving him a legacy of 200 merks Scots, or £11, 25. 2d. sterling. This sum the old man piously devoted to the education of his favourite son, who proceeded with it to Edinburgh, and was enrolled a student of the university. Michael was soon distinguished for his proficiency, and for his taste for poetry. Having been three sessions at college, supported by his parents and some kind friends and neighbours, Bruce engaged to teach a school at Gairney Bridge, where he received for his labours about £1 per annum ! He afterwards removed to Forest Hill, near Alloa, where he taught for some 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 college-friend 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, Far to the north grim Winter draws his train, roar. Loosed from the bands of frost, the verdant ground Behold! the trees new deck their withered boughs; 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, While o'er the wild his broken notes resound. While the sun journeys down the western sky, Thus Ashley gathered academic bays; Thus gentle Thomson, as the seasons roll, Boreas, with all his tempests, warned in vain. Now, spring returns: but not to me returns And all the joys of life with health are flown. Starting and shivering in the inconstant wind, And count the silent moments as they pass: The winged moments, whose unstaying speed I hear the helpless wail, the shriek of woe; Farewell, ye blooming fields! ye cheerful plains! 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, 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. had undoubtedly formed to himself a high stanHe dard 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. 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 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 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 in 1781; the fact of his having shewn it in manuscript to JOHN LOGAN. several friends before its publication, and declared it to be his composition; and that, during his In republishing the Ode, Logan made some corlife, his claim to be the author was not disputed. rections, such as an author was likely to make in a piece written by himself eleven or twelve years the authorship of this ode, established Logan's before. In 1873, Mr David Laing, in a tract on claim beyond all dispute-one of the many services to Scottish literature, which Mr Laing during a the Cuckoo, the best of Logan's productions are his long life has rendered. Apart from the ode To 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. Á 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! To the Cuckoo. Hail, beauteous stranger of the grove! And woods thy welcome sing. What time the daisy decks the green, Delightful visitant! with thee The school-boy, wandering through the wood Starts, the new voice of spring to hear,* What time the pea puts on the bloom, An annual guest in other lands, Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green, No Winter in thy year! Oh, could I fly, I'd fly with thee! * This line originally stood : which was probably altered by Logan as defective in quantity. W. Mackelvie. '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, Her voice, in agony extreme, The Almighty heard: then from his throne And from the heaven, that opened wide, "When mortal man resigns his breath, The soul immortal wings its flight 'Prepared of old for wicked men The bed of torment lies; 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, Away the Summer flies, The flowers resign their sunny robes, And all their beauty dies. Nipt by the year the forest fades ; The leaves toss to and fro, and streak '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 Par. Lost, Book iii. scholarship at Clare Hall, in the university of his native town. He was afterwards tutor to the son of the Earl of Jersey. Whitehead had a taste for the drama, and wrote the Roman Father, and Creusa, two indifferent plays. After he had received his appointment as laureate, he was attacked by Churchill, and a host of inferior satirists, but he wisely made no reply. In the family of Lord Jersey he enjoyed comfort and happiness, till death, at seventy, put a period to his inoffensive life. Variety. This easy and playful poem opens with the description of a rural pair of easy fortune, who live much apart from society. Two smiling springs had waked the flowers A courteous neighbour at the door, Are right, as men must live with men. At morn, at noon, at eve, at night: Yet neighbours were not quite the thing The rill still murmurs; and the moon Agreed. A rich old uncle dies, In different circles reigned supreme; So separate, so quite bon-ton, Silence is eloquence, 'tis said. Are you, too, tired?'-then checked a groan. She wept consent, and he went on : "True to the bias of our kind, 'Tis happiness we wish to find. In rural scenes retired we sought In vain the dear, delicious draught, Though blest with love's indulgent store, We found we wanted something more. 'Twas company, 'twas friends to share The bliss we languished to declare; 'Twas social converse, change of scene,. To soothe the sullen hour of spleen; Short absences to wake desire, And sweet regrets to fan the fire. 'We left the lonesome place, and found, In dissipation's giddy round, A thousand novelties to wake Sip the cool springs that murmuring flow, 'Behold us now, dissolving quite Of all that 's gay, and all that's great: |