Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/479

 9s. ix. JUNE 14, 1902.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

471

Bruce or Pearson in support of their confident asseverations, so far as I am aware.

The Rev. George Gilfillan, in his * Specimens, with Memoirs, of the Less-Known British Poets' (3 vols., 8vo, Edin., 1860), supplies some information regarding the Bruce-Logan controversy, but is not quite accurate on several points. He confuses Dr. William Robertson, the historian, with Dr. Thomas Robertson of Dalmeny ; gives 1782 for 1781 as the date of the first issue of Logan's 'Poems'; 1807 instead of 1796 for the publi- cation of Baird's edition of Bruce ; and says that in the former year it was published "for the behoof of Bruce's mother, then an aged widow." She had died, however, at the age of eighty-eight, in 1798. Mr. Gilfillan was of the opinion that the 4 Ode'

"was originally written by Bruce, but probably polished to its present perfection by Logan, whose other writings give us rather the impression of a man of varied accomplishments than of deep feeling or original genius. If Logan were not the author of ' The Cuckoo,' there was a special baseness con- nected with the fact, that when Burke sought him out in Edinburgh solely from his admiration of that poem, he owned the soft and false impeach- ment, and rolled as a sweet morsel praise from the greatest man of the age, which he knew was the rightful due of another."

But we prefer the dictum of Thomas Camp- bell, who says :

" But as the charge of stealing the ' Cuckoo ' from Bruce was not brought against Logan in his life- time, it cannot, in charity, stand against his memory on the bare assertion of his accusers."

As a foot-note he quotes Sputhey's observa- tion from the Quarterly Review, vol. xi. p. 501 : " Because some pieces which are printed among the remains of poor Michael Bruce have been ascribed to Logan, Mr. Chalmers has not thought it proper to admit Bruce's poems into his collection."

Logan's cousin, Mrs. Hutchison, wife of Mr. John Hutchison, merchant in Edinburgh,

" informs the present writer [this was penned in 1795 by Mr. Anderson, and is printed in his ' Poets,' vol. xi. p. 1030] that she saw the ' Ode ' in Logan's hand- writing before it was printed In this edition the

present writer has not ventured, upon the authority of Dr. Robertson, to give him the pieces ascribed to him in Bruce's 'Poems,' which he did not think proper to claim himself ; neither has he presumed, upon the authority of Mr. Pearson, to deprive him ot the ' Ode to the Cuckoo,' to which he has put his name. In justice to both poets he has followed the collection of their poems, printed under their re- spective names, in the present edition, distinguish- ing the pieces which have been claimed for the one

or the other by their respective friends The ' Ode

to the Cuckoo,'' which he is supposed to have written, and certainly improved, is distinguished by the delicate graces of simplicity and tenderness in the highest degree." It would have been the height of folly and

the depth of meanness on Logan's part if he, who had been one of the ministers of Leith for several years from 1773, had claimed as his own the composition of another. 1'ntil contrary documentary evidence is forth- coming, I maintain that the authorship of the 'Ode' must justly be ascribed to the Rev. John Logan. ADAM SMAIL.

Two of the lines quoted by MR. BAYNE from Bruce's * Elegy written in Spring ' are borrowed obviously from Milton :

Now Spring returns: but not to me returns The vernal joy my better years have known.

Bruce.

Seasons return : but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom. Milton.

E. YARDLEY.

HERRICK'S * HESPERIDES ' : " LUTES OF AMBER " (9 th S. ix. 408). The passage to which H. I. B. refers is an instance of the confusion between the fossil gum "amber" and the metallic alloy "electrum," which begins in Homer and continues to the seven- teenth century, causing a considerable amount of controversy amongst scholars. In this case Herrick clearly uses "amber" in the same sense as the English translators of Ezekiel, i.e., that of a " shining " metal. (Luther, by the way, avoids the term in the German version.) In a rather large collection of notes on the subject made some years ago, I find this ambiguity a frequent source of misapprehension. A "chair of amber," for example, is understood to be of the fossil, though the context, "with a mirror of the same material," displays the error. An in- stance of the converse use of "electrum " for amber " occurs in Greene :

It was her master's death That drew electrum from her weeping eyes.

J. DORMER.

SAMUEL TAYLOR, SHORTHAND WRITER (7 th S. ii. 308, 377, 457 ; 9 th S. ix. 410). Further search has enabled me to discover, from the burial register of St. Margaret's, Westminster, that Samuel Taylor was buried on 10 August, 1811. MATTHIAS LEVY.

SHIPS OF WAR ON LAND (9 th S. vii. 147, 235, 296, 354, 431 ; viii. 128; ix. 214). W L. Hertslet in his ' Dor Treppenwitz der Welt- geschichte,' Berlin, 1886, p. 228, gives the following :

" In the ' Muster- Roll of all the Regiments and

Corps of the Royal Prussian Army,' Berlin, 1806,

Himburg, p. 255, one finds among extracts from the

listory of the hussar regiment No. 2, formerly

Zieten's Hussars,' the statement, taken from a