execrable poetry. Some of her Letters, of which seven mortal volumes were published under similar circumstances by Mr. Constable, are not, however, without spirit.

JOHN LOGAN.

(1748-1788.)

John Logan was born, in 1748, at Soutra, Mid-Lothian, where his father rented a small farm. He was taught the first rudiments of learning at the school at Musselburgh, near Edinburgh. In 1762 he proceeded to the University of Edinburgh, where he made great proficiency in the learned languages. His turn being to works of imagination, he found much that was congenial in a course of lectures read by Professor Stevenson, on Aristotle's Art of Poetry, and on Longinus; and while these directed his taste, he applied his leisure hours to Homer, Milton, and other works of that high cha

racter.

He produced several of his own minor pieces at the University, under the encouragement of Dr. Main, of Lord Elibank, and of Dr. Blair. On the recommendation of the latter, he became, in 1768, private tutor to young Sinclair, afterwards the eminent statist. Here, however, he did not remain long, but returned to Edinburgh to attend the divinity lectures, with a view to entering the Church.

In 1770 he edited the poems of Michael Bruce, a youth who died at the age of twenty-one, after exhibiting considerable talents for poetry. In the volume, however, Logan inserted several pieces of his own, without specifying them; a circumstance which gave rise to some controversy.

In 1770 Logan was admitted a preacher; and in 1773 accepted a pastoral charge at South Leith. Two years afterwards he took an active share, under the direction of the General Assembly, in that revision of the psalmody of the Scottish Church which was published in 1781.

In 1779 he delivered, successfully, a course of lectures on the Philosophy of History, of which he published, in 1781, an analysis, entitled Elements of the Philosophy of History, and soon after an entire lecture, in the form of an Essay on the Manners of Asia.

In the same year appeared his Poems, which reached a second edition in a few months. This success induced him to complete a tragedy he had been for some time preparing, entitled Runnimede, interdicted by the licenser for its politics, printed in 1783, and afterwards acted on the Edinburgh theatre, but which met with no extraordinary applause, either in the closet or on the stage.

Logan's parishioners began now to complain that his literary, and especially his dramatic studies, diverted him from his spiritual duties; and that he indulged in potations, still more calculated to the same dereliction. The controversy assumed, at length, such a position, that Logan was induced to retire upon a small annuity. Coming to London in 1786, he for some time subsisted by furnishing articles to the English Review and other periodicals. He wrote also A Review

of the principal charges against Mr. Hastings, so able a vindication of that gentleman, that the publisher was proceeded against by the friends of the impeachment, but acquitted by the jury. Logan's health had been now for some time broken, and he died in Marlborough-street, Dec. 28, 1788.

Dr. Robertson edited a volume of his sermons (1790), and a second in the following year. Both were very successful publications. Several other manuscripts were once intended for publication. Among these are his Lectures on History, and three or four tragedies.

Logan's position among our minor poets is prominent; his pathetic pieces are scarcely excelled by those of any other writer.

AMHURST SELDEN.
(Circa 1749.)

Amhurst Selden is known as the author of a poem called Love and Folly, published in April 1749, and which Mr. Campbell considers better than much that is generally condemned to oblivion.

ROBERT FERGUSSON.

(1750-1774.)

Robert Fergusson was born at Edinburgh 1750, the son of the accountant to the British Linen-Hall. Having been educated first at the high school at Edinburgh, and then at a grammar-school at Dundee, he obtained an exhibition at the University of St. Andrew's, where he distinguished himself as a youth of much promise. He was wilful, however, and insubordinate, and was at one time expelled as leader of an outbreak among the students; but he was received back on the promise of future good behaviour. His father dying, and leaving no means behind him, Fergusson quitted college in a state of utter destitution; he made his way on foot to Edinburgh, where he arrived so exhausted with the fatigue of a journey for which his delicate frame was by no means calculated, that he underwent an illness which had nearly proved fatal. Shortly after his recovery he obtained a clerkship in the Commissary clerk's office, which he afterwards exchanged for a clerkship in the Sheriff clerk's office. Here, instead of engrossing, he penned stanzas, the ability of which attracted attention, and procured for him invitations into society, the dissipations of which he was not of a temperament to resist. He became by degrees prostrated in body and mind from the effect of his debaucheries; and finally, after long fits of penitence and religious despondency, went mad. It is related, that when committed to the receptacle of the insane, a consciousness of his dreadful fate seemed to come over him. At the moment of his entrance, writes Campbell, he uttered a wild cry of despair, which was re-echoed by a shout

from all the inmates of the dismal mansion, and left an impression of inexpressible horror on the friends who had the task of attending him. His mother being in extreme poverty, had no other mode of disposing of him. A remittance which she received a few days after, from a more fortunate son who was abroad, would have enabled her to support the expense of affording him attendance in her own house; but the aid did not arrive till the poor maniac had expired (1774). Fergusson's works consist of several poems of considerable humour, in the Scottish dialect, the chief of which, The Farmer's Ingle, supplied the hint of the Cotter's Saturday Night to Burns, who esteemed the author with excessive partiality, and placed over his grave a headstone inscribed with verses of appropriate feeling.

THOMAS CHATTERTON.

(1752-1770.)

Thomas Chatterton was born the 20th of November, 1752, the posthumous son of the master of the free school in Pyle-street, Bristol. At five years of age he attended the same school; but improved so little, that his mother took him back. While under her care, his childish attention was, according to her account afterwards, engaged by the illuminated capitals of an old musical manuscript in French, which circumstance encouraged her to initiate him in the alphabet, and she afterwards taught him to read from an old black-letter Testament, or Bible.

His next remove, at the age of eight, was to Colston's charity school. One of the masters, Philips, whom he has celebrated in an elegy, was himself a frequent writer of verses in the magazines, and habitually endeavoured to excite a degree of poetical emulation among his scholars; but to this Chatterton appeared for some time indifferent. About his tenth year he began to read from inclination, sometimes hiring his books from a circulating library, and sometimes borrowing them from his friends; and before he was twelve, had gone through about seventy volumes, principally history and divinity. Before this time he had composed some verses, particularly those entitled Apostate Will, which disclose, at that early age, a disposition to personal satire, and a consciousness of superior sense.

In July 1767 he was bound apprentice to Mr. John Lambert, an attorney at Bristol, for seven years, in the capacity rather of servant than of pupil. His chief employment was to copy precedents, which frequently did not require more than two hours in a day; and the rest of his time was filled up by the desultory course of reading which he had begun at school, and which embraced old English phraseology, heraldry, and miscellaneous antiquities. Of the two last he acquired enough knowledge to enable him to create fictions capable of deceiving those who had none. His general conduct during his apprenticeship was decent and regular.

In the beginning of October 1768, the completion of the new bridge at Bristol suggested to him a fit opportunity for playing off