John Logan (minister)

Lord Elibank, who then resided at Ballencrieff in the parish of Aberlady, interested himself in Logan's welfare, and gave him access to his library.

[1] Logan's literary reputation led to his being appointed by the General Assembly in 1775 a member of the committee charged with the revision and enlargement of the paraphrases and hymns for use in public worship, with Blair, William Cameron and John Morison.

[1] He was not short of influential friends willing to help, with suggestions such as a change of parish to Canongate for which the support of John Sincliar was sought.

[1] In 1783 he had a play "Runnamede" performed on the Edinburgh stage at the Theatre Royal at the east end of Princes Street.

It was a polemic defending Hastings against the Edmund Burke line, citing oriental despotism, Montesquieu and Edward Gibbon.

[1][10] Thomas Erskine defended Stockdale successfully, arguing that Logan's aspersions were made in good faith.

[10] A View of Antient History, by William Rutherford, head of an academy at Uxbridge, which appeared in two volumes (1788–93), was believed by Logan's friends to have been written by him.

In 1781 he published a volume of poems, including the Ode to the Cuckoo, and others which he had printed along with those of Michael Bruce, and also his main contributions to the paraphrases.

His song "The Braes of Yarow" was republished by Coleridge in the third issue of his short-lived 1796 politically radical periodical The Watchman[2] Logan left other manuscripts, of which Thomas Robertson of Dalmeny, his college friend and literary executor, gave an account in a letter to Robert Anderson, dated 19 September 1795.

Logan's authorship of the poems and hymns he claimed was defended by David Laing, John Small, and the Rev.

[2][10] It made out a clear parallel between John of England and King George III of Great Britain, and for that reason the censorship of the Lord Chamberlain had prevented its production on the London stage.