Lord Craig wrote some time afterwards an affecting paper in the _Mirror_, recording the fate, and commending the genius of Bruce. John Logan, in 1770, published his poems. In the year 1807, the kind-hearted Principal Baird published an edition of the poems for the behoof of Bruce's mother, then an aged widow. And in 1837, Dr William Mackelvie, Balgedie, Kinross- shire, published what may be considered the standard Life of this poet, along with a complete edition of his Works. It is impossible from so small a segment of a circle as Bruce's life describes, to infer with any certainty the whole. So far as we can judge from the fragments left, his power was rather in the beautiful, than in the sublime or in the strong. The lines on Spring, from the words 'Now spring returns' to the close, form a continuous stream of pensive loveliness. How sweetly he sings in the shadow of death! Nor let us too severely blame his allusion to the old Pagan mythology, in the words-- 'I hear the helpless wail, the shriek of woe, I see the muddy wave, the dreary shore;' remembering that he was still a mere student, and not recovered from that fine intoxication in which classical literature drenches a young imaginative soul, and that at last we find him 'resting in the hopes of an eternal day.' 'Lochleven' is the spent echo of the 'Seasons,' although, as we said before, its descriptions possess considerable merit. His 'Last Day' is more ambitious than successful. If we grant the 'Cuckoo' to be his, as we are inclined decidedly to do, it is a sure title to fame, being one of the sweetest little poems in any language. Shakspeare would have been proud of the verse-- 'Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green, Thy sky is ever clear; Thou hast no sorrow in thy song, No winter in thy year.' Bruce has not, however, it has always appeared to us, caught so well as Wordsworth the differentia of the cuckoo,--its invisible, shadowy, shifting, supernatural character--heard, but seldom seen--its note so limited and almost unearthly:-- 'O Cuckoo, shall I call thee bird, Or but a _wandering voice_?'