Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Volume 3
General
Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Volume 3
English poetry
23 Vain prayer, the coward's weak resource!
Directing reason, active force,
Propitious Heaven bestows.
But ne'er shall flame the thundering sky,
To aid the trembling herd that fly
Before their weaker foes.
24 In names there dwell no magic charms,
The British virtues, British arms
Unloosed our fathers' band:
Say, Greece and Rome! if these should fail,
What names, what ancestors avail,
To save a sinking land?
25 Far, far from us such ills shall be,
Mankind shall boast one nation free,
One monarch truly great:
Whose title speaks a people's choice,
Whose sovereign will a people's voice,
Whose strength a prosperous state.
JOHN LOGAN.
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
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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