I 16 QUEENSFERRY TO MUSSELBURGH.
for other erections. The drama is an excellent piece of poetical composition,
finely conceived and interestingly wrought out, and gives unmistakeable
evidence that the writer was possessed, in no mean degree, of the higher
developments of the tragic Muse. The town can boast, too, of the Rev. John
Logan, one of the ministerial incumbents of South Leith, ‘author of a popular
volume of sermons, some of the Paraphrases, and one or two productions of a
dramatic.kind. Logan had a gift Muse-ward certainly, and did now and
again emit a few sweet notes ; but the very best of the things which he had
the audacity to publish as his own were not his own. Poor, shrinking,
simple-headed, consumptive Bruce was cruelly treated by this friend of his !
To pilfer from him those fine, plaintive, bird-like lays, ‘ Few are thy days, and
full of woe,’ ‘ Behold my servant, see him rise,’ and especially that inimitably
simple and beautifully tender effusion, his ‘ Ode to the Cuckoo,’ and claim
them as his, thus robbing a friend, and a friend departed, of his just meed of
praise-0 the heartlessness of the man I Strange too that a native of Leith
should have been the righter of the bitter wrong thus done Bruce. Dr.
Mackelvie, who with a brave heart and a fearless hand stript this literary jackdaw
of his borrowed plumage, and reduced him to his own honest coat of decen t
black, was the son of humble parents, and if not born, at least was brought up, in
the Kirkgate, and to him in this, as in other respects, literature owes its heartiest
thanks. The Rev. Dr. Michael Russel, of the Episcopal Chapel here, likewise
distinguished himself in the world of letters ; besides several works of
great culture and elegance of composition which he wrote, he was also the
accomplished author of the ‘ Connection of Sacred and Profane History, in
continuation of Prideaux,’ a work of great learning and research, and which
entitles him to rank very high both as a scholar and a writer. In like
manner Mr. Cuthbertson, of the Secession body, and one of the ministers of
Leith, is not unknown as an author: he wrote a very able, temperate and
well received exposition of the Book of Revelation, published in three
quarto volumes, one of the best popular interpretations perhaps of this
wonderful Scripture which has been written. Mr. Cuthbertson, again, was
the immediate predecessor of the late Dr. Smart, of whose sermons a neat
quarto volume has been issued since his death, with a very excellently written
memoir of the good man by his life-long and highly esteemed friend and
brother, the Rev. Principal Harper, D.D. The Rev. Dr. Colquhoun also
published several popular books of a pious nature, and the Rev. Principal
Harper has been long favourably known as a gentleman of literary distinction
and eminent erudition.
