LOG AN, JOHN (1748-88), a Scottish poet of some reputation, was born in 1748, and was son of George Logan, a farmer at Soutra, in East Lothian. Being destined for the church, he was in 1762 sent to study at the university of Edinburgh. After finishing his course, Logan was in 1768-69 tutor at Ulbster to the well-known Sir John Sinclair, and in 1770 he edited some of the poems of his college friend MICHAEL BRUCE (q. V.). This publication was ''for the benefit of Bruce's parents, who were in humble circumstances. In order to make up a volume he inserted some poems of his own, with some from other Of the seventeen pieces in the volume five were by Bruce, poems by Logan was " The Ode to the Cuckoo."

In 1770 Logan was licensed as a preacher by the presbytery of Edinburgh, and in 1771 was presented to the charge of South Leith, but was not inducted till 1773. In 1779 he delivered a course of lectures on the philosophy of history in St Mary's Chapel, Edinburgh. An analysis by one of the lectures On the Manners and Government of Asia, 1781.

Logan was an active member of the committee of the so much attention that a second edition was issued in burgh he sought out Logan and complimented him as the author of the finest ode in the English language.

In 17S3 he published a tragedy called Runnamede, against Warren Hastings. He died in December 1788.

A work on ancient history, published that year under the name of Dr Rutherford, rector of an academy at Uxbridge, is believed to have been the lectures written by Logan. his sermons were published in 1790-91, in two volumes, and have been several times reprinted. His poems were collected and published in 1812, with a memoir understood to be by the Rev. E. Douglas of Galashiels.

About forty years after Logan's death what may be called the Bruce•Logau controversy arose by the publication in 1836 of a life of Michael Bruce, prefixed to an edition of his poems by the Rev. Dr MacKelvie. In this work there is claimed for Bruce the authorship of sixteen of the pieces in the volume issued by Logan in 1770. Logan was at the same time charged with having retained some of Bruce's MSS. entrusted to him, which he used in the revision of the paraphrases. These statements have been reiterated with much abuse of Logan in a memoir of Bruce prefixed to an edition of his works published in 1865, by the hey. Dr Grosart. In this edition the paraphrases written by Logan are inserted as haying been written by Brace. The evidence, however, brought against Logan in these biographies of Bruce, being nearly altogether of a hearsay character, is not of much value, and it may be urged that Logan was not blamed during his life for any such literary delinquencies. If anything can be brought against him with justice, it is his publishing as his own, with very few alterations, the second Paraphrase, which is the composition of Dr Doddridgc.

Within the last few years the various pieces in the volume of Bruce's poems issued by Logan in 1770 have been subjected to careful criticism, and the statements made from personal knowledge by the Rev. Dr Robertson of Dalmeny, the college friend of Bruce and Logan, who was often referred to on the subject, must be held to be substantially correct. These will be found in a brochure by Dr David Laing, Ode to the Cuckoo (Edinburgh 1770), with remarks on its authorship, in a letter to J. C. Bleabp, LLD., 1873. See also a paper by J. Small in the Brit. and For. Bean. Rev., 1877, and especially two papers by the Rev. R. Small, ibid., 1878.