termarry, and which fill society with bitter- |(2). Ode to the Cuckoo. Edinburgh, 1770. ness. The clergy of a Protestant Church publicly rank the clergy of Protestant Churches in the same country along with publicans as obstructives to religious instruction. It is for the common welfare-it is for the strength and harmony of English society -that all organizations having for their object to teach the people to obey God, should feel themselves equally under the protection and sanction of the State. This free and friendly alliance with all Churches cannot subsist while there is an invidious and exceptional alliance with one. It is monstrous that, in the present age, the Parliament of England should practically proceed on the assumption that there is but one Christian Church in England. Not less monstrous is it that Episcopalians should occupy the time of Parliament with their affairs, after it has been proved by the experience of two centuries that Free Churches can manage their own concerns without the smallest inconvenience of any kind to the State. There is, of course, also, the important consideration that great sums of public money, which ought to be appropriated. by Parliament to the national use, are in possession of a single sect. But it is not necessary to enter upon the general argument in favour of disestablishment and disendowment. All the best Liberals will, we believe, agree with Mr. Bright that the party must look in that direction. Mr. Gladstone has avowed himself deeply reluctant to undertake the work of disestablishment. But he has abandoned the grounds of defence he once took up; he has gradually, as his powers have matured, become more boldly and comprehensively Liberal; and our surmise, which we give only as such, is that he feels the path indicated by Mr. Bright to be the only one on which the Liberal party can advance. We are able, at all events, to state that his sentiment towards the Nonconformists is one of cordiality and satisfaction. May the day not be very far distant when political relations will be renewed between the Liberal party and the greatest of Liberals! With Remarks on its Authorship, in a Letter to John Campbell Shairp, Esq., LL.D., Principal of the United College, University of St. Andrew's. By DAVID LAING, LL.D. Edinburgh, 1873. (3). Michael Bruce and the Ode to the Cuckoo. By Principal SHAIRP, LL.D. (Good Words, November, 1873.) Ar the end of the year 1763, two lads met in the Greek class in the University of Edinburgh, and, in spite of marked contrast of character, they formed a close friendship, which, notwithstanding that they soon went on very different ways, would seem to have lasted till the sad and early death of the older. There would have been little special in this. College friendships that are lifelong are not uncommon; but both the lads wrote poetry-poetry which the world will not willingly let die. One can conjure up a vision of them: the one fair, pale, highbrowed, with a certain mingled rusticity and air of distinction, quietly serious beyond his years, haunting the Edinburgh book-stalls, such as they then were, and doting on choice editions of his favourite authors, which he was fain to buy. The other straight of figure, and a little florid, with a keen, dark eye, and a long nose, and the general air of a man of parts, who knows his powers and scents coming distinction, full of talk and anecdote, and determined to get along and achieve greatness somehow. Agility, tact, resource seem marked on the one; shrinking timidity, and pride that mates with self-depreciation, are the characteristics of the other. Friendship, they say, favours difference of temperament, and certainly such difference was here. The relation of these two has become historical, because one or other of them, among various things besides, wrote a song, which for sweetness, simplicity, and truth has hardly been surpassed, and, as coming at a time when poetry in these islands was lost in artifice and trick, stands out as something unique and unexpected in literature. The Ode to the Cuckoo' strikes a true note, and not only so, it legitimately preluded that melodious burst' which came with Burns and was carried forward by Wordsworth. But its authorship is still a disputed point. Critics and literary men are to this day di ART. VIII.-Internal Evidence in a Case of vided between the claims of Michael Bruce Disputed Authorship. and John Logan, and the matter has come forward to be anew discussed. A few years ago, the Rev., A. B. Grosart (so well-known for his careful reprints of old and rare works) published an elaborate, and so far exhaustive, life of Michael Bruce, in which The father and Michael, then a mere child, having visited a book-stall at one of the market fairs in the village, the poems of Sir David Lindsay of the Mount were inquired for. The vendor of books did not chance to have the volume; but learning that it was asked for the child before him, he was so surprised that he should want it, that he turned up a little volume, entitled "Key to the Gates of Heaven," and promised to let him have it on condition that he would read a portion of it on the spot; which being done to his satisfaction, immediately he awarded the prize.' But the head did not outrun the heart. He was the youngest-the Joseph of the family, without provoking the envy of his brethren, and yet he seems never to have been spoiled or selfish. He was often found, notwithstanding his own delicate constitution, taking the part of the weak against the strong, and in this, certainly, the child was father of the man.' The Scottish Dominie is regarded as the impersonation of unrelenting cruelty-himself a sort of embodied Calvinism-but Bruce, we are told, when he taught a school, never could be induced to use either rod or "taws." And then his capability of attachment! If he found no means of confessing his love for Madeline Grieve,* he had friendships that were confessed and perfect. The proprietor of an estate near to Kinnesswood, Mr. Arnot, of Portmoak, had a son, who became a close companion of Michael's when they were boys, in spite of the apparent disparity of their circumstances; but he died in his sixteenth year. he made short work of Logan's claims. | trace of in the lives of some other poets that This stirred up Dr. David Laing, of Edin- were like him in passing early away. This, burgh, to print, with some additions, a for instance, is a gracious glimpse of childpamphlet, which he had written a good ish life, not without its touch of humour many years ago in favour of Logan, and to and oddity :— distribute copies of it among those likely to be interested in the matter. Articles have appeared here and there in reviews and newspapers founded on it, and Principal Shairp, of St. Andrew's, recently published, in Good Words, an impartial résumé of the whole controversy, his judgment upon it decidedly leaning towards Bruce. There is one preliminary remark to be made. We must beware of allowing our judgments to be swayed by our sympathies. For it must be admitted that Bruce, far more powerfully than Logan, appeals to the latter. His life had a wonderful unity of its own; and in the pathos of its gentle ambitions and unfulfilled hopes, there is something that assorts so sweetly with our ideal of the poet-loved of the gods, and therefore dying youngthat somehow the suffrages of our sympathies are fully enlisted in his favour before we have heard any arguments. The Ode to the Cuckoo,' we feel, is just such as should have been written by such a poet. There is a simplicity and purity about it, a note breaking on the ear, so artless and bird-like sweet, that it seems a final utterance, a sweet carol fluted ere the death,' rather than a prelude to more promiscuous efforts. From the early, childish days in Kinnesswood village, nestling at the foot of the green Lomonds on Lochleven's edge, where the boy astonished all who knew him by his aptness in acquiring knowledge, and his love of books; from the days of the 'herding' among the hills, and the evenings with his pious, orderly, hard-working father, the readings by the quiet fireside, when the loom was at rest and the shuttle gave no sound-from the college days, with their subdued enthusiasms, and the recurring vacation-times at home, when he had to excuse himself for such vagaries as writing poems about a gowk,' on to his school-teachings and his love for Madeline Grieve, who yet in after years declared that 'Michael Bruce never asked her,'-in all we see the shy, sensitive, rarely-elevated poetic nature that commands love and sympathy wherever love and sympathy exist in generous human breasts. Mr. Grosart may have erred in some points: but certainly literature owes much to him for the careful and conscientious way in which he has gathered together everything characteristic of Bruce. The life itself was a lyric-brief, bright, and touched all through with threads of kindliest interests, such as we see little or no 'The removal of this youth, who seems to have been a singularly interesting boy, moved Bruce deeply. The father was a man of fine character, of rare sagacity, and, in his circumstances, of rare culture. To him it was Michael Bruce was indebted for his first and other of the great names of our country. introduction to Shakespeare, Pope, Young, The death of William, so far from sundering Mr. Arnot and the young "student," appears to have drawn them closer and kindlier together. To the end they corresponded, and many an unostentatious present witnessed to the thoughtfulness and tenderness of the father's regard for Bruce.' *This doggerel verse still circulates in the neighbourhood of Kinnesswood: In Cleish kirkyard lies Magdalene Grieve, Bruce's tender memory of his school companion, Arnot, is enshrined in verse, where he mourns him under the name of Daphnis. Mr. Grosart writes: ". . . . Before Bruce had been enrolled as student at Edinburgh, Mr. Arnot declared his readiness to render what assistance lay in his power, and the monthly chest, as it passed from Kinnesswood to Edinburgh, showed that he did not fail of his promise, for there went in it now a "kit" of sweet butter, and now a dozen new-laid eggs, even well-nigh all the presents to David at Mahanaim. "Honey, and butter, and sheep, and cheeses of kine." (2 Sam. xvii. 29.)' The privations, of which a good deal has been made, seem to have been of a modified character, and Bruce's early death cannot be regarded as having been, as some suppose, accelerated by anything of that kind. He was comparatively well provided for, and had money to spend in gratifying himself by the purchase of choice books; as this, from Mr. Grosart, will prove :— 'All his books that remain are beautiful copies of the finest editions. I have his fair vellum-bound Greek Testament, in selected sections, and the Rev. Thomas Swan of Muirton, has his Lactantius, with this inscription on the title-page, "Michel Brusius jure emptionis tenet hunc librum. Edinburgh, Martii 10mo, 1763 tis;" also his "Josephus," by Stoer.' And he himself makes confession of this weakness very naïvely in this vanishing glimpse of his book tastes, which we find in a fragment of a letter to his friend, Mr. Ar not: [Edinburgh, November 27, 1764.] 'I daily meet with proof that money is a necessary evil. When in an auction, I often say to myself, How happy should I be if I had money to purchase such a book! How well should my library be furnished! Nisi obstat res angusta domi. "My lot forbids, nor circumscribes alone My growing virtues, but my crimes confutes." He proceeds,― 'Whether any virtues would have accompanied me in a more elevated station is uncertain; but that a number of vices, of which my sphere is incapable, would have been its attendants, is unquestionable. The Supreme Wisdom has seen this want, and the Supreme Wisdom cannot err.' After finishing his four years' course in the art classes at Edinburgh, he went to study at the Burgher Divinity Hall, where there obtained an odd, informal sort of arrangement, by which the students were boarded out free in the burgher families round Kinross. Mr. Grosart thus gives us a quaint glimpse of an old Scotch collegiate system, which seems to have had excellent results: 'In the congregation of the professor [the Rev. John Swanston] there were a number of proprietors of lesser or larger farms, and otherwise well to do. These received the young men into their several houses in the character of friends without any remuneration further than the satisfaction of thereby rendering service to the future ministers of their beloved Church. In accordance with this arrangement, Bruce resided, during his attendance at the Hall, with Mr. Henderson, the "Laird" of Turfhills, whose son George had been Michael's associate at the University, and who is celebrated in Lochleven under the name of Lelius. . . . It was into this family-one of the old stamp of "godliness," kingly men and mother-of-Lemuel-like women that Michael Bruce was received; and There were the traditions of "the Covenantit must have had peculiar attractions for him. ers," there was a hereditary taste for ballad lore, and the "auld manners of auld lang syne," there was generous hospitality; there was a fellow-student like-minded; and above all and about all as an atmosphere, real godliness of no austere but contrariwise joyous sort.' We have referred to these incidents in Michael Bruce's life to show how large a share his friendships had in framing the form of his poetry. Doubtless he gave more than he owed to those he thus mourned, but genius of the type he illustrates is always generous. And so with such everrecurring touches of gentle sweetness, Bruce's life rounds itself off, no violence nor strife nor noisy ambition in it, till at length, in July of the year 1767, he finds himself dying in his father's house in Kinnesswood. But the gentle spirit knows no fear. When Lawson, another fellow-student, who had gone to see him, remarked, with an air of surprise, how cheerful he looked, Bruce replied, 'Why should not a man be cheerful on the verge of heaven?' His Bible is said to have been found lying on his pillow, marked at Jeremiah xxii. 10, and this verse written on a blank leaf : "Tis very vain for me to boast How small a price my Bible cost; During Bruce's second year at Edinburgh, the group of burgher students had been joined by another-John Logan-also a burgher student. Logan, who was the son of a small farmer in East Lothian, soon impressed the professors by his literary facili ties, especially gaining the favour of Dr. | end, appears here first in the list of conHugh Blair. He by-and-by abandoned the tents. Logan's determination to the Scotburghers to study for the Established tish Church had been so far favourable. Church, no doubt considering that his He had been appointed one of the ministers chances of preferment and his influence of Leith; but he speedily fell into disagreewould thus be increased; and it is possible able relations with his people, and demitted that there may be something in Principal his charge finally, to turn Londonward and Shairp's statement, that he 'found the way try literature, where he delivered lectures of life among his fellow-seceders too severe and published several works. Dr. Anderfor his tastes. But, apparently, the 'severi- son says that— ty of their way of life' was far more favourable to open literary ambitions than the freer style of life which prevailed in the Establishment, if we are to trust a remark of Dr. David Laing's, to which we shall again refer; for we find in February of the year 1766, when Michael was teaching school in the damp, discomposing region of Forrest Mill, some fifteen or sixteen miles from Kinnesswood, the same fellow-student Lawson, who afterwards visited him on his death-bed, writing thus to him with respect to his poems: 'I received yours, and am surprised that you say you have nothing to write. Have the Muses forsaken you? Have the tuneful sisters withdrawn from the banks of "Lochleven"? It is impossible you can have offended them. No; they will yet exalt your name as high as they ever did Addison's or Pope's. My dear friend, I long to see you appear in public. I hope I shall be freed from suspense ere long. Do not fail to do it soon.' Now this Lawson was a man of cultivation, and was afterwards a professor, and the fact that in 1766 there were poems of Bruce's in existence, and of such quality and of sufficient number to lead Lawson to urge publication of a volume, as is here clearly meant, is very significant in reference to the train of argument which Principal Shairp has pursued. But what we are most concerned to remark just now is the innocent way in which seceder students look at poetic and literary fame, compared with the Established moderate' students, if we are at all to credit Dr. David Laing. While Logan was yet a student-in 1770 -he published a volume of poems, entitled 'Poems on several occasions by Michael Bruce,' hinting in the preface that 'some poems wrote by other authors' had been inserted to make up a miscellany.' Logan's name as editor was not given, but it is evident enough that Logan did not hide that he was the editor, and gave forth that he had written some of the poems. Eleven years afterwards-in 1781-he_issued another vol., Poems by the Rev. John Logan, one of the ministers of Leith,' and in this 'The Ode to the Cuckoo,' which had been included in the former volume, near the 'Deviations from the modes of the world, and violations of professional decorum, offended his parishioners, and made it eligible for him to discontinue the exercise of his clerical function. He grew burdensome to himself, and with the usual weakness of men so diseased, eagerly snatched that temporary relief which the bottle supplies.' The picture of his surrounding himself in his solitary London lodging with poor children, and making them read the Bible to him, is very touching in every way. We have deemed it expedient to give these bioall, in considering the question of authorgraphical facts in the outset, because, after ship of the 'Ode to the Cuckoo,' we are rea ly more dependent upon internal evidence and personal character than some writers seem willing to admit. Those who have written in defence of Bruce have fallen back the traditions of a neighbourhood, which on what Dr. Laing is able to call gossipare, however, in some very essential respects borne out by written letters which have been preserved. But, as on these points we think Principal Shairp has been very thorough, we propose now to supplement what he has written, by stating, as simply as we can, difficulties, arising chiefly from points of internal evidence, that lie in the way of our implicitly accepting Dr. Laing's conclusion, notwithstanding that we are as concerned as he is that no injustice should be done to the memory of a gifted but erring man whom he has shown such a chivalrous desire to defend. And, naturally enough, we first turn to the question of how Logan came into possession of the poems of Bruce, which appeared in the volume of 1770. Dr. McKelvie, Mr. Grosart, and others say that soon after the death of Michael Bruce, Logan went to Kinnesswood, and under various pretexts and promises got the whole of Mi chael's MSS. from the old man, including the much-prized 'Gospel Sonnets.' Dr. Laing sets this aside as unproved; but we hold he has grievously failed in showing, as we think in the circumstances he was bound to show, that Logan came by them in a perfectly honourable manner. If Logan, who by internal evidence admits having MSS. of Bruce's before 1770, did not receive the MSS. in this way, he got them from some source. What source? There are just three ways. Either he received them from Bruce himself before he died, or from Bruce's father or representatives after that event, or he came by copies of them in some less trustworthy way. If he did not receive them from the father at Kinnesswood, but from the young dying fellow-student, then his method of dealing with his sacred trust, even as we infer it from his own writings, is of a very doubtful kind, as we shall soon see. We here put aside the idea of his using copies of the poems got in any discreditable way, though, be it well noted, this forms the only other alternative. If we turn to the preface itself we get no direct help; but, carefully scanning it, we are forced to draw certain inferences. There we find the elegance and epigrammatic form which then were fashionable, but no light of the kind we want. Indeed, the more we look, the more perplexed we are. The editor advertises his volume as the Poems on several occasions of Michael Bruce,' puts in, by the way, a remark that all the poets are not Bruce's, but 'some wrote by different authors,' giving no hint whatever that he was himself author of any, and proceeds thus boldly and broadly to characterize them: 'If images of nature that are beautiful and new; if sentiments, warm from the heart, interesting and pathetic; if a style, chaste with ornament, and elegant with simplicity; if these and many other beauties of nature and of art, are allowed to constitute true poetic merit, the following poems will stand high in the judgment of men of taste.' We are all very well acquainted with the text copy-line, 'self-praise is no recommendation,' and it is very odd in Dr. Laing that just after he has based an argument in favour of Logan's claims on the fact that he gave himself out among his friends as editor of the volume, and author of several of the poems, soon after their publication in 1770, and perhaps even before their appearance in print, he should write: There is indeed on the part of Logan an excess of MODESTY, probably owing to his not wishing to assume for himself at the time a literary character, in the prospect of becoming a probationer of the Church of Scotland,' which discloses, as we hinted already, a narrowness in the Established Church which is, in every respect, very extraordinary. And it is odder still to find it followed by this confession: 'It was, however, an ill-judged and unfortunate circumstance that no account is given of the actual state of Bruce's MSS., and that the editor had not put the initials or some mark to distinguish the respective authors of the poems,' in which latter regret, especially in the light of that wholesale praise of the poems from Logan's own pen, we do most cordially agree. And we confess ourselves the more concerned in pressing this point on Dr. Laing and those who side with him, that Logan is self-convicted in regard to the want of some mark of distinction of the authors being very necessary. It was no oversight, it was not an omission of haste or thoughtlessness; for listen to Logan's words: The reader of taste will easily distinguish them [the poems wrote by different authors] without their being particularized by any mark.' Now, as has been well pointed out by Mr. Grosart, this is simply preposterous, because nothing of Bruce's having previously appeared in print whereby his style might be known,' there was no material whatever for such comparison and judgment. But two remarks may be made here, properly resolving themselves into questions. Did not Logan succeed as a student because of his literary turn? And if so, why should he have been ashamed of it or so exercised by his excessive modesty as to injure himself and run the risk of harm to his future reputation? Were the Moderates' of those days with whom he associated himself afraid of being known as literary men, as wits, as secular poets and playrights? And, above all, can we infer from Logan's general conduct that he was likely to differ in this respect from the class to which he joined himself? Literature owes much to the Scottish Moderates' of those days; and to their credit they at least were not hypocrites to hide what their real bent was. Was it likely that a man who had 'ratted' from a poor Church and joined a rich one, whose prevailing tendency then was to exalt literary refinement, would play the hypocrite, and shrink from due and open acknowledgment of poems of which he himself affirmed that they would stand high in the opinion of men of taste?' We are not here delivering 'judgment, we are merely stating difficulties in the way of our receiv ing the views of Logan's apologists. That Logan should become ashamed of the exercise of the qualities and powers which had procured him all the notice that gave him distinction seems really very inconsistent, and in our idea is not to be accounted for on any ordinary construction of human nature and its motives-save one. Once more. While some allowance might have been made in those days for a literary student, there was surely less for a literary minister; so that Logan just grew the bolder the more reason there was for his |