We refer our readers to Dr Mackelvie's well-known and very able Life of poor Bruce, for his full story, and for the evidence on which his claim to the 'Cuckoo' is rested. Apart from external evidence, we think that poem more characteristic of Bruce's genius than of Logan's, and have therefore ranked it under Bruce's name.

Bruce was born on the 27th of March 1746, at Kinnesswood, parish of Portmoak, county of Kinross. His father was a weaver, and Michael was the fifth of a family of eight children.

Poor as his parents were, they were intelligent, religious, and most conscientious in the discharge of their duties to their children. In the summer months Michael was sent out to herd cattle; and one loves to imagine the young poet wrapt in his plaid, under a whin-bush, while the storm was blowing,—or gazing at the rainbow from the summit of a fence,—or admiring at Lochleven and its old ruined castle,—or weaving around the form of some little maiden, herding in a neighbouring field —some 'Jeanie Morrison'—one of those webs of romantic early love which are beautiful and evanescent as the gossamer, but how exquisitely relished while they last! Say not, with one of his biographers, that his 'education was retarded by this employment;' he was receiving in these solitary fields a kind of education which no school and no college could furnish; nay, who knows but, as he saw the cuckoo winging her way from one deep woodland recess to another, or heard her dull, divine monotone coming from the heart of the forest, the germ of that exquisite strain, 'least in the kingdom' of the heaven of poetry in size, but immortal in its smallness, was sown in his mind? In winter he went to school, and profited there so much, that at fifteen (not a very early period, after all, for a Scotch student beginning his curriculum—in our day twelve was not an uncommon age) he was judged fit for going to college. And just in time a windfall came across the path of our poet, the mention of which may make many of our readers smile. This was a legacy which was left his father by a relative, amounting to 200 merks, or £11, 2s.6d. With this munificent sum in his pocket, Bruce was sent to study at Edinburgh College. Here he became distinguished by his attainments, and particularly his taste and poetic powers; and here, too, he became acquainted with John Logan, afterwards his biographer. After spending three sessions at college, supported by his parents and other friends, he returned to the country, and taught a school at Gairney Bridge (a place famous for the first meeting of the first presbytery of the Seceders) for £11 of salary. Thence he removed to Foresthill, near Alloa, where a damp school-room, poverty, and hard labour in teaching, united to injure his health and depress his spirits. At Foresthill he wrote his poem 'Lochleven,' which discovers no small descriptive power. Consumption began now to make its appearance, and he returned to the cottage of his parents, where he wrote his 'Elegy on Spring,' in which he refers with dignified pathos to his approaching dissolution. On the 5th of July 1767, this remarkable youth died, aged twenty-one years and three months. His Bible was found on his pillow, marked at the words, Jer. xxii. 10, 'Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan him: but weep sore for him that goeth away: for he shall return no more, nor see his native country.'

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?'

How fine this conception of a separated voice—'The viewless spirit of a lonely sound,' plaining in the woods as if seeking for some incarnation it cannot find, and saddening the spring groves by a note so contradictory to the genius of the season. In reference to the note of the cuckoo we find the following remarks among the fragments from the commonplace-book of Dr Thomas Brown, printed by Dr Welsh:—'The name of the cuckoo has generally been considered as a very pure instance of imitative harmony. But in giving that name, we have most unjustly defrauded the poor bird of a portion of its very small variety of sound. The second syllable is not a mere echo of the first; it is the sound reversed, like the reading of a sotadic line; and to preserve the strictness of the imitation we should give it the name of Ook-koo.' This is the prose of the cuckoo after its poetry.

TO THE CUCKOO.

1 Hail, beauteous stranger of the grove!
The messenger of spring!
Now Heaven repairs thy rural seat,
And woods thy welcome sing.

2 Soon as the daisy decks the green,
Thy certain voice we hear;
Hast thou a star to guide thy path,
Or mark the rolling year?

3 Delightful visitant! with thee
I hail the time of flowers,
And hear the sound of music sweet,
From birds among the bowers.

4 The school-boy, wandering through the wood
To pull the primrose gay,
Starts thy curious voice to hear,
And imitates the lay.

5 What time the pea puts on the bloom,
Thou fli'st thy vocal vale,
An annual guest in other lands,
Another spring to hail.

6 Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,
Thy sky is ever clear;
Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year.

7 Oh, could I fly, I'd fly with thee!
We'd make with joyful wing
Our annual visit o'er the globe,
Attendants on the spring.

ELEGY, WRITTEN IN SPRING.

1 'Tis past: the North has spent his rage;
Stern Winter now resigns the lengthening day;
The stormy howlings of the winds assuage,
And warm o'er ether western breezes play.

2 Of genial heat and cheerful light the source,
From southern climes, beneath another sky,
The sun, returning, wheels his golden course:
Before his beams all noxious vapours fly.

3 Far to the North grim Winter draws his train,
To his own clime, to Zembla's frozen shore;
Where, throned on ice, he holds eternal reign,
Where whirlwinds madden, and where tempests roar.

4 Loosed from the bonds of frost, the verdant ground
Again puts on her robe of cheerful green,
Again puts forth her flowers, and all around,
Smiling, the cheerful face of Spring is seen.

5 Behold! the trees new-deck their withered boughs;
Their ample leaves, the hospitable plane,
The taper elm, and lofty ash disclose;
The blooming hawthorn variegates the scene.

6 The lily of the vale, of flowers the queen,
Puts on the robe she neither sewed nor spun:
The birds on ground, or on the branches green,
Hop to and fro, and glitter in the sun.

7 Soon as o'er eastern hills the morning peers,
From her low nest the tufted lark upsprings;
And cheerful singing, up the air she steers;
Still high she mounts, still loud and sweet she sings.

8 On the green furze, clothed o'er with golden blooms
That fill the air with fragrance all around,
The linnet sits, and tricks his glossy plumes,
While o'er the wild his broken notes resound.

9 While the sun journeys down the western sky,
Along the green sward, marked with Roman mound,
Beneath the blithesome shepherd's watchful eye,
The cheerful lambkins dance and frisk around.

10 Now is the time for those who wisdom love,
Who love to walk in Virtue's flowery road,
Along the lovely paths of Spring to rove,
And follow Nature up to Nature's God.

11 Thus Zoroaster studied Nature's laws;
Thus Socrates, the wisest of mankind;
Thus heaven-taught Plato traced the Almighty cause,
And left the wondering multitude behind.

12 Thus Ashley gathered academic bays;
Thus gentle Thomson, as the seasons roll,
Taught them to sing the great Creator's praise,
And bear their poet's name from pole to pole.

13 Thus have I walked along the dewy lawn;
My frequent foot the blooming wild hath worn:
Before the lark I've sung the beauteous dawn,
And gathered health from all the gales of morn.

14 And even when Winter chilled the aged year,
I wandered lonely o'er the hoary plain:
Though frosty Boreas warned me to forbear,
Boreas, with all his tempests, warned in vain.

15 Then sleep my nights, and quiet blessed my days;
I feared no loss, my mind was all my store;
No anxious wishes e'er disturbed my ease;
Heaven gave content and health—I asked no more.

16 Now Spring returns: but not to me returns
The vernal joy my better years have known;
Dim in my breast life's dying taper burns,
And all the joys of life with health are flown.

17 Starting and shivering in the inconstant wind,
Meagre and pale, the ghost of what I was,
Beneath some blasted tree I lie reclined,
And count the silent moments as they pass:

18 The winged moments, whose unstaying speed
No art can stop, or in their course arrest;
Whose flight shall shortly count me with the dead,
And lay me down at peace with them at rest.

19 Oft morning-dreams presage approaching fate;
And morning-dreams, as poets tell, are true.
Led by pale ghosts, I enter Death's dark gate,
And bid the realms of light and life adieu.

20 I hear the helpless wail, the shriek of woe;
I see the muddy wave, the dreary shore,
The sluggish streams that slowly creep below,
Which mortals visit, and return no more.

21 Farewell, ye blooming fields! ye cheerful plains!
Enough for me the churchyard's lonely mound,
Where Melancholy with still Silence reigns,
And the rank grass waves o'er the cheerless ground.

22 There let me wander at the shut of eve,
When sleep sits dewy on the labourer's eyes:
The world and all its busy follies leave,
And talk of wisdom where my Daphnis lies.

23 There let me sleep forgotten in the clay,
When death shall shut these weary, aching eyes;
Rest in the hopes of an eternal day,
Till the long night is gone, and the last morn arise.