As a poet his reputation spread, through sympathy for his early death; and also because of the alleged theft by John Logan of several of his poems. Logan, a fellow-student of Bruce, obtained Bruce's manuscripts from his father, shortly after the poet's death. For the letters, poems, etc., that he allowed to pass out of his hands, Alexander Bruce took no receipt and did not keep any list of the titles. Logan edited in 1770 "Poems on Several Occasions, by Michael Bruce", in which the "Ode to the Cuckoo" appeared. In the preface he stated that "to make up a miscellany, some poems written by different authors are inserted." In a collection of his own poems in 1781, Logan printed the "Ode to the Cuckoo" as his own; the friends of Bruce did not challenge its appropriation publicly but Dr Davidson, Professor of Natural & Civil History wrote at the time that he saw a copy of the "Ode to the Cuckoo" in the possession of a friend, in Bruce's handwriting, and signed by Bruce, with the words 'you think I might have been better employed than writing about a gowk (cuckoo)'. In a manuscript "Pious Memorials of Portmoak", drawn up by Bruce's friend, David Pearson, Bruce's authorship of the "Ode to the Cuckoo" is emphatically asserted.