his friends, Dr. Robertson of Dalmeny, Linlithgowshire, Dr. Blair, and Dr. Hardy. He left other manuscripts, of which Dr. Robertson, his college friend and literary executor, gives an account in a letter to Dr. Anderson, editor of the ‘British Poets,’ dated 19 Sept. 1795. In this letter Dr. Robertson also gives a list of Logan's poems, including the ‘Ode to the Cuckoo,’ which had been printed with those of Michael Bruce. Years before this Bruce's friends had claimed for him the authorship of the ‘Ode to the Cuckoo’ and other poems and hymns which Logan had published under his own name. The charge against Logan has been renewed from time to time, and some have gone the length of asserting that Bruce was the author of all the paraphrases which Logan furnished to the church. There are some circumstances unfavourable to Logan, such as the disappearance of a volume of Bruce's manuscripts, and a few plagiarisms in his sermons, but his authorship of the poems and hymns he claimed has been ably vindicated in recent times by David Laing, John Small, and finally by the Rev. R. Small, who has presented the whole evidence, both external and internal, in such a way as to give Logan's claim genuine substance.
Logan was one of the most popular preachers of the time; his historical productions evince wide knowledge, comprehensive views, and a philosophic mind; his poetical versions of scripture are singularly felicitous, and the ‘Ode to the Cuckoo’ was pronounced by Edmund Burke ‘the most beautiful lyric in our language.’ In his better days he won the friendship and esteem of some of the most eminent clergymen of the time, and when he disappointed their hopes they made allowance for the temperament he had inherited.
Besides the publications mentioned above, ‘A View of Ancient History,’ by Dr. Rutherford, head of an academy at Uxbridge, which appeared in two volumes (1788–93), was believed by Logan's friends to have been written by him.
[Scott's Fasti; Anderson's British Poets, xi. 1030; Chambers's Eminent Scotsmen, ii. 541–3; Life prefixed to Poems, Edinb. 1805; Life prefixed to Sermons, Lond. 1810; Ode to the Cuckoo, with remarks on its Authorship by David Laing, Edinb. 1873; Michael Bruce and the Authorship of the Ode to the Cuckoo, by John Small, M.A., late librarian, Edinb. University, an article in the British and Foreign Evang. Review, July 1877; Michael Bruce versus John Logan, two articles by the Rev. John Small, M.A., in the British and Foreign Evang. Review, April and October 1879; Scottish Paraphrases, by Douglas J. Maclagan, Edinb. 1889.]
LOGAN, Sir ROBERT (d. 1606), of Restalrig, supposed Gowrie conspirator, was descended from an old line of Scottish barons, who originally possessed Logan in Ayrshire, and acquired the barony of Restalrig, now partly occupied by South Leith, in the reign of Robert I. He was the son of Sir Robert Logan of Restalrig by his wife Agnes Gray, daughter of Patrick, lord Gray, and afterwards wife of Alexander, fifth lord Home [q. v.], and Sir Thomas Lyon [q. v.] He enjoyed a special reputation for lawlessness and violence. It was probably his father, described by Calderwood as ‘neither prudent nor fortunate,’ who sold the superiority of Leith in 1555 to the queen regent (History, i. 527). Logan supported the cause of Mary Stuart, at least after her escape to England, and was one of those who under Kirkcaldy of Grange held the castle of Edinburgh till its surrender in 1573 (ib. iii. 281; Reg. P. C. Scotl. ii. 218).
By his marriage to a daughter of Sir Patrick Hume, Logan in 1580 came into possession of Fast Castle, Berwickshire, with the adjoining lands, which gave him special facilities for a wild and lawless life. On 23 May 1587 he appears as one of the sureties for Patrick, master of Gray, and afterwards sixth lord Gray [q. v.], that he would leave the country within a month (ib. iv. 173). Some time afterwards he became conspicuous as the supporter of the turbulent Earl of Bothwell [see Hepburn, Francis Stewart, fifth Earl of Bothwell]; and on this account had on 16 Oct. 1591 to give security in 10,000l. not ‘to reset [i.e. harbour] or intercommune with the king's declared traitors’ (ib. p. 679). On 12 Feb. 1592–3, for failing to appear to answer for his conspiracy with Bothwell, he was denounced a rebel (ib. v. 42); and on 13 June 1594 he was again outlawed for failing to answer a charge of highway robbery preferred against his servants (ib. p. 148). In July of the same year he entered into a contract with Napier of Merchiston [see Napier, John, 1550–1617], by which the latter bound himself to use ‘all craft and engine’ to discover a treasure supposed to have been hid within Fast Castle, Logan undertaking to give him a third of what he discovered and to guard him safely back to Edinburgh. On 8 March 1598–9 Logan appeared before the council and bound himself not to ‘suffer his place of Fast Castle to be surprised by any of his majesty's traitors’ (ib. p. 539). On 1 Jan. of this year Lord Willoughby in a letter to Cecil describes him as ‘a main loose man; a great favourer of thieves reputed; yet a man of good clan, as they here term it: and a good fellow.’
