mised an accession of comfort and respectability, proved the bane of poor Churchill. He was in his twenty-seventh year, and his conduct had been up to this period irreproachable. He now, however, renewed his intimacy with Lloyd and other school companions, and launched into a career of dissipation and extravagance. His poetry drew him into notice; and he not only disregarded his lectureship, but he laid aside the clerical costume, and appeared in the extreme of fashion, with a blue coat, goldlaced hat, and ruffles. The dean of Westminster remonstrated with him against this breach of clerical propriety, and his animadversions were seconded by the poet's parishioners. Churchill affected to ridicule this prudery, and Lloyd made it the subject of an epigram: 'Tis shameful, irreverent-you must keep to church rules. If wise ones I will; and if not they're for fools. If reason don't bind me, I'll shake off all fetters, To be black and all black I shall leave to my betters. The dean and the congregation were, however, too powerful, and Churchill found it necessary to resign the lectureship. His ready pen still threw off at will his popular satires, and he plunged into the grossest debaucheries. These excesses he attempted to justify in a poetical epistle to Lloyd, entitled "Night,' in which he revenges himself on prudence and the world by railing at them in good set terms. This vindication proceeded,' says his biographer, on the exploded doctrine, that the barefaced avowal of vice is less culpable than the practice of it under a hypocritical assumption of virtue. The measure of guilt in the individual is, we conceive, tolerably equal; but the sanction and dangerous example afforded in the former case, renders it, in a public point of view, an evil of tenfold magnitude.' The poet's irregularities affected his powers of composition, and his poem of The Ghost, published at this time, was an incoherent and tiresome production. A greater evil, too, was his acquaintance with Wilkes, unfortunately equally conspicuous for public faction and private debauchery. Churchill assisted his new associate in the North Briton, and received the profit arising from its sale. This circumstance rendered him of importance enough to be included with Wilkes in the list of those whom the messengers had verbal instructions to apprehend under the general warrant issued for that purpose, the execution of which gave rise to the most popular and only beneficial part of the warm contest that ensued with government. Churchill was with Wilkes at the time the latter was apprehended, and himself only escaped owing to the messenger's ignorance of his person, and to the presence of mind with which Wilkes addressed him by the name of Thomson.'* The poet now set about his satire, the Prophecy of Famine, which, like Wilkes's North Briton, was specially directed against the Scottish nation. The outlawry of Wilkes separated the friends, but they kept up a correspondence, and Churchill continued *Life of Churchill prefixed to works. London: 1804. When Churchill entered the room, Wilkes was in custody of the messenger. 'Good morning, Mr Thomson,' said Wilkes to him. How does Mrs Thomson do? Does she dine in the country?' Churchill took the hint as readily as it had been given. He replied that Mrs Thomson was waiting for him, and that he only came, for a moment, to ask him how he did. Then almost directly he took his leave, hastened home, secured his papers, retired into the country, and eluded all search. to be a keen political satirist. The excesses of his daily life remained equally conspicuous. Hogarth, who was opposed to Churchill for being a friend of Wilkes, characteristically exposed his habits by caricaturing the satirist in the form of a bear dressed canonically, with ruffles at his paws, and holding a pot of porter. Churchill took revenge in a fierce and sweeping 'epistle' to Hogarth, which is said to have caused him the most exquisite pain. After separating from his wife, and forming an unhappy connexion with another female, the daughter of a Westminster tradesman, whom he had seduced, Churchill's career drew to a sad and premature close. In October 1764 he went to France to pay a visit to his friend Wilkes, and was seized at Boulogne with a fever, which proved fatal on the 4th of November. With his clerical profession Churchill had thrown off his belief in Christianity, and Mr Southey mentions, that though he made his will only the day before his death, there is in it not the slightest expression of religious faith or hope. So highly popular and productive had his satires proved, that he was enabled to bequeath an annuity of sixty pounds to his widow, and fifty to the more unhappy woman whom he had seduced, and some at Dover, and some of his gay associates placed over surplus remained to his sons. The poet was buried his grave a stone on which was engraved a line from one of his own poems Life to the last enjoyed, here Churchill lies. The enjoyment may be doubted, hardly less than the taste of the inscription. It is certain that Churchill expressed his compunction for parts of his conduct, in verses that evidently came from the heart: Look back! a thought which borders on despair, The Conference. The most ludicrous, and, on the whole, the best of Churchill's satires, is his Prophecy of Famine, a Scots pastoral, inscribed to Wilkes. The Earl of Bute's administration had directed the enmity of all disappointed patriots and keen partisans against the Scottish nation. Even Johnson and Junius descended to this petty national prejudice, and Churchill revelled in it with such undisguised exaggeration and broad humour, that the most saturnine or sensitive of our countrymen must have laughed at its absurdity. This unique pastoral opens as follows:Two boys whose birth, beyond all question, springs From great and glorious, though forgotten kings, Shepherds of Scottish lineage, born and bred On the same bleak and barren mountain's head, By niggard nature doomed on the same rocks To spin out life, and starve themselves and flocks, Fresh as the morning, which, enrobed in mist, The mountain's top with usual dulness kissed, Jockey and Sawney to their labours rose ; Jockey, whose manly high cheek bones to crown, Who would, but cannot, with a master's skill, The characters of Garrick, &c., in the Rosciad, have now ceased to interest; but some of these rough pen-and-ink sketches of Churchill are happily executed. Smollett, who he believed had attacked him in the Critical Review, he alludes to with mingled approbation and ridicule Whence could arise this mighty critic spleen, The author wrote as man ne'er wrote before? In walks of humour, in that cast of style, In comedy, his natural road to fame, In 'Night,' Churchill thus gaily addressed his friend The reputation of Churchill was also an aërial structure. No English poet,' says Southey, had ever enjoyed so excessive and so short-lived a popularity; and indeed no one seems more thoroughly to have understood his own powers; there is no indication in any of his pieces that he could have done any thing better than the thing he did. To Wilkes he said, that nothing came out till he began to be pleased with it himself; but, to the public, he boasted of the haste and carelessness with which his verses were poured forth. Had I the power, I could not have the time, Popularity which is easily gained, is lost as easily; such reputations resembling the lives of insects, whose shortness of existence is compensated by its proportion of enjoyment. He perhaps imagined that his genius would preserve his subjects, as spices preserve a mummy, and that the individuals whom he had eulogised or stigmatised would go down to posterity in his verse, as an old admiral comes home from the West Indies in a puncheon of rum: he did not consider that the rum is rendered loathsome, and that the spices with which the Pharaohs and Potiphars were embalmed, wasted their sweetness in the catacombs. But, in this part of his conduct, there was no want of worldly prudence: he was enriching himself by hasty writings, for which the immediate sale was in proportion to the bitterness and personality of the satire.' MICHAEL BRUCE. MICHAEL BRUCE-a young and lamented Scottish poet of rich promise-was born at Kinnesswood, parish of Portmoak, county of Kinross, on the 27th of March 1746. His father was a humble tradesman, a weaver, who was burdened with a family of eight children, of whom the poet was the fifth. The dreariest poverty and obscurity hung over the poet's infancy, but the elder Bruce was a good and pious man, and trained all 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. His 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, 2s. 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 £11 per annum! He afterwards removed to Forest Hill, near Alloa, where he taught for some time with no better success. His schoolroom 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 Ode to Spring, 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. 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, Kinrossshire. In this full and interesting memoir ample reparation is made to the injured shade of Michael Bruce for any neglect or injustice done to his poetical fame by his early friend Logan. Had Bruce lived, it is probable he would have taken a high place among our national poets. He was gifted with the requisite enthusiasm, fancy, and love of nature. There was a moral beauty in his life and character which would naturally have expanded itself in poetical composition. The pieces he has left 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 following passage is the most original and pleasing in the poem : [A Rural Picture.] Now sober Industry, illustrious power! Swells the exulting thought, expands the soul, Imagination rouses at the scene; And backward, through the gloom of ages past, Encircled with her swains and rosy nymphs, Nor yield to old Arcadia's blissful vales With mirth and music. Even the mendicant, Bowbent with age, that on the old gray stone, Sole sitting, suns him in the public way, Feels his heart leap, and to himself he sings. The conclusion of the poem gives us another picture of rural life, with a pathetic glance at the poet's own condition : [Virtue and Happiness in the Country.] How blest the man who, in these peaceful plains, Of rural life, he dwells; and with him dwells The silent path of life. Learned, but not fraught By studied accent, and high-sounding phrase. Thus sung the youth, amid unfertile wilds The Last Day is another poem by Bruce in blank verse, but is inferior to Lochleven.' The want of originality is more felt on a subject exhausted by Milton, Young, and Blair; but even in this, as in his other works, the warmth of feeling and graceful freedom of expression which characterise Bruce are seen and felt. In poetical beauty and energy, as in biographical interest, his latest effort, the Elegy, must ever rank the first in his productions. With some weak lines and borrowed ideas, this poem has an air of strength and ripened maturity that powerfully 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; Far to the north grim Winter draws his train, roar. Loosed from the bands of frost, the verdant ground And follow Nature up to Nature's God. Thus Socrates, the wisest of mankind; Thus heaven-taught Plato traced the Almighty cause, Thus gentle Thomson, as the seasons roll, Boreas, with all his tempests, warned in vain. Then, sleep my nights, and quiet blessed my days; No anxious wishes e'er disturbed my ease; I feared no loss, my mind was all my store; 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, And count the silent moments as they pass: I hear the helpless wail, the shriek of wo; Farewell, ye blooming fields! ye cheerful plains! 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; JOHN LOGAN. JOHN LOGAN. and passionate, full of piety and fervour, and must have been highly impressive when delivered. 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 by different authors were inserted. The best of these he claimed, and published afterwards as his own. The friends of Bruce, indignant at his conduct, have since endeavoured to snatch this laurel from his brows, and considerable uncertainty hangs over the question. 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; the fact of his having shown it in manuscript to several friends before its publication, and declared it to be his composition; and that, during the whole of his life, his claim to be the author was not disputed. On the other hand, in favour of Bruce, there is the oral testimony of his relations and friends, that they always understood him to be the author; and the written evidence of Dr Davidson, Professor of Natural and Civil History, Aberdeen, that he saw a copy of the ode in the possession of a friend of Bruce, Mr Bickerton, who assured him it was in the handwriting of Bruce; that this copy was signed Michael Bruce,' and below it were written the words, 'You Mr D'Israeli, in his 'Calamities of Authors,' has writing about a gowk'-[Anglice, cuckoo.] will think I might have been better employed than included the name of JOHN LOGAN as one of those unfavourable to the case of Logan, that he retained It is unfortunate men of genius whose life has been some of the manuscripts of Bruce, and his conduct marked by disappointment and misfortune. had undoubtedly formed to himself a high standard tisfactory. Bruce's friends also claim for him some He throughout the whole affair was careless and unsaof literary excellence and ambition, to which he of the hymns published by Logan as his own, and never attained; but there is no evidence to warrant they show that the unfortunate young bard had the assertion that Logan died of a broken heart. applied himself to compositions of this kind, though From one source of depression and misery he was happily exempt: though he died at the early age The truth here seems to be, that Bruce was the none appeared in his works as published by Logan. of forty, he left behind him a sum of £600. Logan founder, and Logan the perfecter, of these exquisite was born at Soutra, in the parish of Fala, Mid- devotional strains: the former supplied stanzas Lothian, in 1748. His father, a small farmer, edu- which the latter extended into poems, imparting to cated him for the church, and, after he had obtained the whole a finished elegance and beauty of diction a license to preach, he distinguished himself so which certainly Bruce does not seem to have been much by his pulpit eloquence, that he was appointed capable of giving. Without adverting to the disone of the ministers of South Leith. He after-puted ode, the best of Logan's productions are his wards read a course of lectures on the Philosophy verses on a Visit to the Country in Autumn, his half of History in Edinburgh, the substance of which he dramatic poem of The Lovers, and his ballad stanzas published in 1781; and next year he gave to the public one of his lectures entire on the Government moral sentiment runs through the whole, and his on the Braes of Yarrow. A vein of tenderness and of Asia. The same year he published his poems, language is select and poetical. In some lines On which were well received; and in 1783 he produced the Death of a Young Lady, we have the following a tragedy called Runnimede, founded on the signing true and touching exclamation :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, which attracted some notice. Among his 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 49 What tragic tears bedew the eye! To the Cuckoo. Hail, beauteous stranger of the grove! |