John Logan was born in the year 1748. He was the son of a farmer at
Soutra, in the parish of Fala, Mid-Lothian. He was educated for the
church at Edinburgh, where he became intimate with Robertson, afterwards
the historian. So, at least, Campbell asserts; but he strangely calls him
a student of the same standing, whereas, in fact, Robertson saw light in
1721, and had been a settled minister five years before Logan was born.
After finishing his studies, he became tutor in the family of Mr Sinclair
of Ulbster, and the late well-known Sir John Sinclair was one of his
pupils. When licensed to preach, Logan became popular, and was in his
twenty-fifth year appointed one of the ministers of South Leith. In 1781,
he read in Edinburgh a course of lectures on the Philosophy of History,
and in 1782, he printed one of them, on the Government of Asia. In the
same year he published a volume of poems, which were well received. In
1783, he wrote a tragedy called 'Runnymede,' which was, owing to some
imagined incendiary matter, prohibited from being acted on the London
boards, but which was produced on the Edinburgh stage, and afterwards
published. This, along with some alleged irregularities of conduct on the
part of Logan, tended to alienate his flock, and he was induced to retire
on a small annuity. He betook himself to London, where, in conjunction
with the Rev. Mr Thomson,--who had left the parish of Monzievaird, in
Perthshire, owing to a scandal,--he wrote for the _English Review_, and
was employed to defend Warren Hastings. This he did in an able manner,
although a well-known story describes him as listening to Sheridan, on
the Oude case, with intense interest, and exclaiming, after the first
hour, 'This is mere declamation without proof'--after the next two, 'This
is a man of extraordinary powers'--and ere the close of the matchless
oration, 'Of all the monsters in history, Warren Hastings is the vilest.'
Logan died in the year 1788, in his lodgings, Marlborough Street. His
sermons were published shortly after his death, and if parts of them are,
as is alleged, pilfered from a Swiss divine, (George Joachim Zollikofer,)
they have not remained exclusively with the thief, since no sermons have
been so often reproduced in Scottish pulpits as the elegant orations
issued under the name of Logan.
We have already declined to enter on the controversy about 'The Cuckoo,'
intimating, however, our belief, founded partly upon Logan's unscrupulous
character and partly on internal evidence, that it was originally written
by Bruce, but probably polished to its present perfection by Logan, whose
other writings give us rather the impression of a man of varied
accomplishments and excellent taste, than of deep feeling or original
genius. If Logan were not the author of 'The Cuckoo,' there was a special
baseness connected with the fact, that when Burke sought him out in
Edinburgh, solely from his admiration of that poem, he owned the soft and
false impeachment, and rolled as a sweet morsel praise from the greatest
man of the age, which he knew was the rightful due of another.