ved was
to crown his anxious labours--the theatre disappointed him--and
afterwards, to his feelings, all the world!

LOGAN had the dispositions of a poetic spirit, not cast in a
common mould; with fancy he combined learning, and with eloquence
philosophy.

His claims on our sympathy arise from those circumstances in his life
which open the secret sources of the calamities of authors; of those
minds of finer temper, who, having tamed the heat of their youth by
the patient severity of study, from causes not always difficult to
discover, find their favourite objects and their fondest hopes barren
and neglected. It is then that the thoughtful melancholy, which
constitutes so large a portion of their genius, absorbs and consumes
the very faculties to which it gave birth.

Logan studied at the University of Edinburgh, was ordained in the
Church of Scotland--and early distinguished as a poet by the
simplicity and the tenderness of his verses, yet the philosophy of
history had as deeply interested his studies. He gave two courses of
lectures. I have heard from his pupils their admiration, after the
lapse of many years; so striking were those lectures for having
successfully applied the science of moral philosophy to the history of
nations. All wished that Logan should obtain the chair of the
Professorship of Universal History--but from some point of etiquette
he failed in obtaining that distinguished office.

This was his first disappointment in life, yet then perhaps but
lightly felt; for the public had approved of his poems, and a
successful poet is easily consoled. Poetry to such a gentle being
seems a universal specific for all the evils of life; it acts at the
moment, exhausting and destroying too often the constitution it seems
to restore.

He had finished the tragedy of "Runnymede;" it was accepted at
Covent-garden, but interdicted by the Lord Chamberlain, from some
suspicion that its lofty sentiments contained allusions to the
politics of the day. The Barons-in-arms who met John were conceived to
be deeper politicians than the poet himself was aware of. This was the
second disappointment in the life of this man of genius.

The third calamity was the natural consequence of a tragic poet being
also a Scotch clergyman. Logan had inflicted a wound on the
Presbytery, heirs of the genius of old Prynne, whose puritanic
fanaticism had never forgiven Home for his "Douglas," and now groaned
to detect genius still lurking