D'Israeli was fond of dramatic situations, not with the desire of exaggerating the picture out of all due proportions, but rather to emphasize its points by creating a nimbus round the devoted heads of his brethren in the craft for the purpose of arresting the public eye. Like many another author before and since his day, it is true, Logan's dreams of ambition were scattered by the rude hand of Fate, and he was left to sigh over the desolate prospect; but there is little or no evidence to support the idea that he died of a broken heart. Logan was born at Soutra, East Lothian, in 1748, and was the son of a small farmer who belonged to the religious sect called Burghers. He was sent to the University of Edinburgh with the view of becoming a minister in that body, but his ideas of Conformity changed, and he was ordained in the Church of Scotland. At the time he was pursuing his own studies he was appointed to superintend those of John Sinclair, afterwards Sir John Sinclair, well-known for his numerous writings on agriculture, and his Statistical Account of Scotland, which was published in 21 volumes. In 1770 Logan edited and published the poetical remains of Michael Bruce, who had been a fellow-student, and in the capacity of literary executor he has been accused of deviating from the line of honest executorship, by including some of his own poems among those of his dead friend. In any case they were afterwards claimed by him as his own, leading to a dispute which cannot be settled satisfactorily even now. Having completed the usual term of study Logan was appointed to the pastoral charge of South Leith in 1773, and soon became popular as a preacher. Some time after his appointment to South Leith, a special committee was selected by the General Assembly for the purpose of revising the Psalmody of the Church, and Logan was elected one of the members owing to his fine poetical tastes. In 1781 the collection of Translations and Paraphrases was published, containing several of Logan's compositions, which, though not among his best productions in verse, possesses a good deal of merit, especially in the harmony of their numbers. duties at South Leith were such as to allow him sufficient leisure to indulge his taste for literature, which was stimulated by the His achievements of such men as Principal Robertson, Professor Ferguson, Dr Hugh Blair, and Adam Smith, all of whom were still in the flesh, and Logan was on friendly terms with most of them. Indeed, it was under their auspices that he gave a course of lectures in Edinburgh, the outlines of which he published in 1781 as The Elements of the Philosophy of History, and in the following year he published in one volume a collection of his poems which greatly increased his reputation, amongst which "The Cuckoo was included, also "The Complaint of Nature," which is assigned to Michael Bruce. Apart from other testimony, the internal evidence appears to favour the authorship of Bruce. So great was the demand that in a short time a second edition of Logan's poems was called for, which encouraged him to greater exertions. The celebrated Edmund Burke was one of those who greatly admired his poems, especially "The Cuckoo," and when he visited Edinburgh he called upon Logan so that he might compliment him personally, probably little thinking at the time that this same young man was destined to be the most pungent critic of the articles he prepared for the House of Commons in connection with the well-known Impeachment of Warren Hastings. In 1783, Logan published a lecture on "The Manners and Government of Asia;" also "Runnamede: A Tragedy," on the signing of Magna Charta, which was accepted and put in rehearsal at Covent Garden Theatre, but when the necessary licence was applied for to the Lord Chamberlain it was refused on account of its political references. Undaunted, Logan was determined it should be staged, and it was afterwards acted at Edinburgh, but it did not meet with the success it deserved, for it was by no means an inferior production; but the Scottish people had a strong prejudice against theatrical representation, and the same spirit which persecuted Allan Ramsay for building a theatre and drove John Home from the Church because he wrote the tragedy of "Douglas," still reigned rampant. Logan, it is true, was not subject to the same aggressive measures, but the mere fact of his tragedy being acted in a theatre created a suspicion in the minds of his congregation that he was unorthodox and insincere. At all events his parishioners disapproved of this exercise of his talents, and a proposition to vacate his Church was formally made, and in 1786 he resigned his charge on receiving a small annuity, and settled in London, where he died. In his "Ode to a Man of Letters" our author conveys some idea of the lofty conception he had of the vocation of a great author when he wrote:— "No tame remission genius knows, No interval of dark repose To quench the eternal flame; From Thebes to Troy, the victor hies After Logan settled in London he devoted himself assiduously to literature, having had from his early youth the disposition of a poetic spirit which now had become full-fledged. His first occupation in the metropolis was that of a journalist, and as his articles bore the stamp of genius he soon became a regular contributor to the English Review. In 1788, the year in which he died, he wrote a review of the principal charges against Warren Hastings. Although the Impeachment was laid in the House of Commons, the articles were not confined to the Commons until they were sent to the Lords for trial as was the custom, but were printed and sold in all the shops in the country without question or obstruction, which, to say the least, was prejudicial to the case of the accused. With the view of counteracting this influence, Logan wrote a review of the Articles of Impeachment, which was published in a small volume by Stockdale, a bookseller in Piccadilly. In submitting these articles to a critical test, it should be borne in mind that our author had to wrestle with the forensic skill of Burke and of Sheridan, who prepared the Articles of Impeachment for the House of Commons. It was on the motion of Fox that the House unanimously voted an address to the King praying His Majesty to direct his Attorney-General to file an Information against John Stockdale as the publisher of a libel upon the Commons House of Parliament, which was accordingly done. The Hon. Thomas Erskine was counsel for the defendant in the case of the King v. Stockdale, and in one of his many famous speeches where the liberty of the Press was endangered, he persuaded the jury to find a verdict of "Not Guilty" for Stockdale.* The author of the Review did not live to witness the triumph of his publisher, as the action was taken in the Court of King's Bench nearly a year after Logan's death. A year before he died he published A Dissertation on the Governments, Manners, and Spirit of Asia, which appeared anonymously, and it is stated by Isaac D'Israeli that if the name of Gibbon had been affixed to the title-page its authenticity would not have been suspected. Among the MSS. he left when he died were two volumes of Sermons, which unmistakably testify to his gift of eloquence and religious sincerity; also the unpublished part of his lectures on History, which were afterwards published by Dr Wm. Rutherford under the title of A View of Ancient History, and claimed as his own, being, as is supposed, deposited with him as security for a small loan. Apart from the disputed Cuckoo," which has been estimated as one of the finest poems in our language, Logan's best efforts are "A Visit to the Country in Autumn," "The Lovers: A Half-Tragedy," and "The Braes of Yarrow," which, irrespective of his other productions, entitle him to rank high among the literary men of either England or Scotland even in that prolific eighteenth century. At this time London was still the Mecca which attracted the young Scots pilgrim, who either had, or thought he had, the literary temperament, and many are the tales of disappointment and woe revealed in the story of such pilgrims. 66 The story of Matthew Bramble, or rather Andrew Macdonald, is one of the most striking instances of dissipated hopes and scattered illusions as an illustration of this fact. 1755-1790. Andrew Macdonald, Andrew Donald, who subsequently prefixed "" "Mac to his surname, was the son of George Donald, a gardener, near Leith, and was born 1755. He was first sent to the Grammar School at Leith, where he received the rudiments of his education, and afterwards studied at the University of Edinburgh with the view of becoming a minister in the Episcopal Church. In 1775 he was ordained by the bishop, * See Speeches of the Hon. Thomas Erskine, Vol. II. 1813. assuming the name of Macdonald, as pastor of the Episcopal Church in Glasgow, where he had ample leisure to indulge his tastes for music and poetry. He had not only a knowledge of musical composition and the theory of music, but he could play the violin with taste and skill, and was one of the founders of a musical club in Glasgow, of which he became one of the directors. As an author he was not known to the public till 1782, when he published a poetical fragment in imitation of Spenser, entitled "Velina." Strange though it may seem, Episcopacy in Glasgow never had been a flourishing cause since the Reformation, and Macdonald's stipend, which merely consisted of the pew-rents, gradually became a diminishing quantity. With the laudable ambition of making better provision for his wife and family he strove to increase his income by the exercise of his pen, and while in Glasgow he wrote a novel called the Independent. Convinced that success as an author would be more difficult of realisation while he remained pastor of the Episcopal Church he resigned his charge at Glasgow, at the same time relinquishing his ecclasiastical functions altogether, and removed to Edinburgh with no other prospects save those of a literary adventurer. While in Edinburgh he wrote Vimonda, a tragedy, which was acted for the benefit of one of the players; but he did not meet with the encouragement as an author he anticipated, and he resolved to make a pilgrimage to London with the view of trying his fortune, walking all the way from Edinburgh with the novel of the Independent in the one pocket and Vimonda in the other. For some time after he settled there he amused the public every morning with a series of humorous or burlesque poems under the assumed name of Matthew Bramble, "and at this very time," says Isaac D'Israeli, “he was one of the most moving spectacles of human melancholy I ever witnessed. It was one evening I saw a tall, famished, melancholy man enter a bookseller's shop, his hat flapped over his eyes and his whole frame evidently feeble from exhaustion and utter misery. The bookseller enquired how he proceeded with his tragedy. 'Do not talk to me about my tragedy! I have, indeed, more tragedy than |