Born: March 27, 1746, Kinnesswood, Kinrossshire, Scot­land.

Died: Ju­ly 5, 1767, Kinnesswood, Kinrossshire, Scot­land.

Buried: Portmoak Churchyard, Kinrossshire, Scot­land.

Son of a weav­er, Bruce re­ceived his ed­u­ca­tion at the vil­lage school, Ed­in­burgh Un­i­ver­si­ty, and the The­o­lo­gic­al Hall of the As­so­ci­ate Sy­nod at Kin­ross, un­der John Swans­ton. To sup­port him­self dur­ing this per­i­od, he con­duct­ed a school dur­ing re­cess at Gair­field Bridge and lat­er at For­rest Mill, near Til­li­coul­try. He al­so pro­vid­ed the sing­ing class at Kin­ness­wood a num­ber of piec­es which his fa­ther re­ferred to as “Gos­pel Son­nets.” Bruce died be­fore com­plet­ing his stu­dies.

Short­ly af­ter Bruce’s death, John Lo­gan, two years young­er than Bruce, whom he had met in Ed­in­burgh, pro­cured from Bruce’s fa­ther the man­u­script vol­ume of Mi­chael’s po­ems, which he prom­ised to pub­lish. In 1770, Po­ems on Several Occasions, by Michael Bruce ap­peared, con­tain­ing se­ven­teen of Mi­chael’s secular po­ems, in­clud­ing the fa­mous “Ode to the Cu­ckoo.” The vol­ume was ed­it­ed by John Logan, who had be­come the Min­is­ter of South Leith. Bruce’s fa­ther com­plained that the “Gospel Son­nets” were not in­clud­ed, and asked for the man­u­script back, but re­ceived no reply. The fa­ther went to vi­sit Lo­gan, who re­plied he feared “that the ser­vants had singed fowls with it.” Only a few scraps of the man­u­script were re­turned.

In 1781, Logan pub­lished Po­ems. By the Rev. Mr. Logan, One of the Ministers of Leith un­der his own name. This vol­ume in­clud­ed sev­er­al of Bruce’s po­ems from in the ear­li­er vol­ume, in­clud­ing “Ode to the Cuckoo” and a number of sac­red po­ems. Ma­ny of Bruce’s class­mates, as well as his bro­ther James, rec­og­nized the po­ems as those they had sung under Mi­chael be­fore his death. In ad­di­tion, Logan had re­cast a num­ber of these po­ems to be in­clud­ed in Scottish Transla­tions and Paraphrases in the same year. This re­sult­ed in a law­suit which com­pelled Logan to re­sign his post at Leith and move to Lon­don, where he had to sup­port him­self sole­ly by his own pen.

Re­search by Mac­kel­vie (Life of Bruce, 1837) and Gros­sart (Works of Bruce, 1865) shows that the po­ems of Bruce re­cast by James Lo­gan in Scottish Trans­la­tions and Par­a­phras­es are:

• Almighty Father of Mankind
• Behold th’Ambassador Divine
• Behold! The Mount­ain of the Lord
• Few are Thy Days and Full of Woe
• Messiah! at Thy Glad Approach
• O Hap­py Is the Man Who Hears
• When Jesus by the Vir­gin Brought
• Where High the Heav­en­ly Tem­ple Stands

Grossart at­trib­utes an ad­di­tion­al poe­m to Bruce:

• The Hour of Our Departure’s Come

Sources