Behind him basely came the Graham,
And pierc'd him in the side;
Out spouting came the purple tide,

And all his tartans dy'd.

But yet his sword quat not the grip,
Nor dropt he to the ground,
Till thro' his en'my's heart his steel
Had forc'd a mortal wound.

Graham like a tree with wind o'erthrown,

Fell breathless on the clay,
And down beside him sunk the Ross,
And faint and dying lay.

The sad Matilda saw him fall.

O spare his life! she cried,
Lord Buchan's daughter begs his life,
Let her not be deny'd.

Her well-known voice the hero heard,
He rais'd his half-clos'd eyes,
And fixed them on the weeping maid,
And weakly thus replies:

In vain Matilda begs the life
By death's arrest deny'd;
My race is run-Adieu, my love!
Then clos'd his eyes and dy'd.

The sword yet warm, from his left side
With frantic hand she drew;

I come Sir James the Ross, she cried,
I come to follow you.

She lean'd the hilt against the ground,
And bar'd her snowy breast;
Then fell upon her lover's face,
And sunk to endless rest.

ELEGY IN SPRING.

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, thron'd on ice, he holds eternal reign ;

Where whirlwinds madden, and where tempests roar,

Loos'd from the bands of frost, the verdant ground

Again puts on her robe of cheerful

green,

Again puts forth her flow'rs; and all around,

Smiling, the cheerful face of Spring is

seen.

Behold! the trees new-deck their wither'd 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 flow'rs the queen, Puts on the robe she neither sew'd nor

spun:

The birds on ground, or on the branches

green,

Hop to and fro, and glitter in the sun.

rage;

Stern Winter now resigns the length'ning day;

The stormy howlings of the winds assuage, And warm o'er ether western breezes

play..

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.

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,

year,

I wander'd lonely o'er the hoary plain; Tho' frosty Boreas warn'd me to forbear, Boreas, with all his tempests, warn'd

in vain.

Then, sleep my nights, and quiet bless'd my days;

I fear'd no loss, my Mind was all my store;

Roman mound,

Beneath the blithesome shepherd's watch

ful eye,

around.

Now is the time for those who wisdom love,

Who love to walk in Virtue's flow'ry 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 heav'n-taught Plato trac'd th' Almighty cause,

And left the wond'ring multitude behind.

Thus Ashley gather'd academic bays; Thus gentle Thomson, as the Seasons roll,

turns

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 shiv'ring in the inconstant wind,

Meagre and pale, the ghost of what I

was,

Beneath some blasted tree I lie reclin'd, And count the silent moments as they

pass:

The winged moments, whose unstaying speed

No art can stop, or in their course arrest;

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 unbiassed judge. We have already, in the life of his fellowstudent 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. His appointment as tutor to Sir John Sinclair, and his subsequent election as the minister of one of the most important charges in the Church of Scotland, at the age of twenty-five, are a sufficient testimony both to his character and his talents. That he owed his position entirely to these will appear from the facts of his history up to this.

His father, George Logan, was a small farmer at Soutra, in the parish of Fala, Edinburghshire; and here John Logan was born in 1748. He was being educated for the ministry of the religious denomination called Burghers—a sect now merged in the United Presbyterian

body; but while at college he changed his views regarding the points on which his father's communion differed from the Church of Scotland, and he became a candidate for an appointment in the National Church. Such a step, however conscientiously taken, is justly liable to suspicion, and nowhere more so than in Scotland; and is naturally most uncharitably construed from the point of view of the deserted party.

While attending Edinburgh University, he received a severe shock on account of the death of his father, who was drowned by being overtaken by the tide, while on his way home on a stormy evening.

In 1768, in his twentieth year, on the recommendation of Dr Blair, he was appointed tutor to the celebrated Sir John Sinclair.

While in this situation, he was entrusted with editing the manuscripts of Michael Bruce-Mr Grosart, Bruce's latest biographer, says in 1767, the year in which Bruce died; but whether Mr Grosart or Logan's biographers, who refer his appointment to 1768, give the right date, we have no means of determining. That some other of Bruce's friends imply that Logan was in Leith at the time, does not tend to inspire much confidence in their accuracy; nor does it restore the credit | of their assertions to be assured by Mr Grosart, that one of them was possessed of "supernatural" powers of memory.

In 1770, Bruce's poems were published by Logan in a small volume of 127 pages, without the editor's name, but with an intimation in the preface that some original poems by other authors were inserted to make up a

miscellany. What were Logan's motives for this particular way of dealing with Bruce's poems it were idle to speculate; yet a dozen innocent explanations will suggest themselves to any unprejudiced judge acquainted with the ways of literary men, before the conclusion that it was the first cunning step in a plan to rob his dead friend of his fame, and his relatives of the profits of his writings. Having referred to the subject at length in Bruce's life, we need only add on this point, that Logan's practical inexperience in such matters would account for the omission of any distinguishing mark anent Bruce's contributions; and his position as a candidate for the favours of a church which was not partial to poetical aspirants, and to which he had but recently acceded, was a sufficient motive for withholding his name from a volume of poems by a student of the communion which he had deserted, and which, at that time, was held in something like contempt by the dominant establishment.

In 1771, Logan was presented to the second charge in South Leith parish; but, owing to his presentation being disputed, he was not inducted till 1773.

In 1775, the Assembly of the Church of Scotland appointed a committee to prepare a selection of hymns and paraphrases, and Logan was placed on the committee. Their selection was placed before the Assembly in 1781; and in the same year Logan published his poems in a small volume under his own name. This volume contained the "Ode to the Cuckoo," and some other poems which were published in the 1770 volume, already referred to, besides