Logan was an active member of the committee of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland appointed in 1775 to revise the “Translations and Paraphrases”· drawn up in 1745 for use in private families, and to adapt them for public worship. The committee finished its; labours in 1781, and their collection of paraphrases is still in use. Eleven of them are the composition of Logan, and others were revised or altered by him. In the same year he published his poems in a volume which attracted so much attention that a second edition was issued in 1782. It also included the “Ode to the Cuckoo,” with which Edmund Burke was so pleased that when in Edinburgh he sought out Logan and complimented him as the author of the finest ode in the English language.

In 1783 he published a tragedy called liunnamede, which met with little success. In 1786 he resigned his charge at South Leith, retaining part of his stipend. He then went to London, where he devoted himself to literature. He was engaged on the management of the English Review, and in 1788 published a pamphlet on the charges 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. R. Douglas of Galashiels.

About forty years after Logan’s death what may be called the Bruce-Logan 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 Rev. Dr Grosart. In this edition the paraphrases written by Logan are inserted as having been written by Bruce. The evidence, however, brought against Logan in these biographies of Brace, 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 Doddridge.

Within the last few years the various pieces in the volume of Brace’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. Shairp, LL.D., 1873. See also a paper by J. Small in the Brit, and For. Evan. Rev., 1877, and especially two papers by the Rev. R. Small, ibid., 1878.