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ROBERT BLOOMFIELD, 1766-1823.

It is not quaint and local terms
Besprinkled o'er thy rustic lay,
Though well such dialect confirms
Its power unletter'd minds to sway;
But 'tis not these that most display
Thy sweetest charms, thy gentlest thrall:-
Words, phrases, fashions, pass away,

But Truth and Nature live through all.

BERNARD BARTON.

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD, the author of The Farmer's Boy, was the son of a tailor at Honington, in Suffolk, and was born on the 3d of December, 1766. At the early age of eleven he was literally the Farmer's Boy of his own poem, being placed with a Mr. Austin, a farmer, at Sapiston, in Suffolk. In this situation, which he has so accurately described, and where he first imbibed his enthusiastic attachment to the charms of nature, he continued for two years and a half, when he was apprenticed to his brother George, a shoemaker, in London. His principal occupation was to wait upon the journeymen; and in his intervals of leisure he read the newspaper, and was soon able to comprehend and admire the speeches of Burke, Fox, and other statesmen of the day. A perusal of some poetry in the London Magazine led to his earliest attempts at verse, which he sent to a newspaper, under the title of The Milkmaid, and The Sailor's Return.

In 1784, to avoid the consequences of some unpleasant disputes among his brethren of the trade, he retired for two months to the country, and was received by his former master, Mr. Austin, with the kindest hospitality. It is to this event we owe the composition of his admirable poem; "and here," observes his brother, "with his mind glowing with the fine descriptions of rural scenery which he found in Thomson's Seasons, he again retraced the very fields where he began to think. Here, free from the smoke, the noise, the contention of the city, he imbibed that love of rural simplicity and rural innocence which fitted him, in a great degree, to be the writer of such a work as The Farmer's Boy." After this visit to his native fields, he recommenced his business as a ladies' shoemaker in London, and shortly after married a young woman by the name of Church. He then hired a room in Bell Alley, Coleman Street,1 and worked in the garret of the house. It was here, in the midst of six or seven other workmen, that he composed the main part of his celebrated poem. Two or three publishers to whom he first offered it, learning his occupation and seeing him so poorly clad, refused it with almost contempt. But at length it reached the hands of Capel Lofft, Esq.,2 who sent it with the strongest recommendations to Mr. Hill, the proprietor of the Monthly Mirror, who negotiated the sale of the poem with the publishers, Verner & Hood. These gentlemen acted with great liberality towards Bloomfield,-to their honor be it said,-by voluntarily giving him two hundred pounds in addition to the fifty pounds originally stipulated for his poem, and by securing to him a portion of the copyright. Immediately on its appearance it was received with the greatest applause from

1 "Bloomfield followed his original calling of a shoemaker at No. 14 Great Bell-Yard, Coleman Street."-MURRAY'S London, p. 135.

2 Editor of the Aphorisms from Shakspeare, and other works.

all quarters, the most eminent critics' coming out warmly in its praise; and within three years after its publication twenty-six thousand copies of it were sold.

His good fortune, which, he said, appeared to him as a dream, enabled him to remove to a more comfortable habitation; but, though he continued working at his trade, he did not neglect the cultivation of his poetical talents. His fame was increased by the subsequent publication of Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs; Good Tidings, or News from the Farm; Wild Flowers; and Banks of the Wye. But an indiscriminate liberality towards his numerous poor relations, together with a growing family, brought him into pecuniary difficulties, which, added to long-continued ill health, so preyed upon his mind that he was reduced at last to a state little short of insanity. He died at Shefford, August 19, 1823, at the age of fifty-seven.

The best poems of Bloomfield are The Farmer's Boy, Wild Flowers, and several of the Ballads and Tales. It is enough to say in praise of them that they have received the warmest commendations of such critics as James Montgomery, Dr. Nathan Drake, Southey, and Sir Egerton Brydges. The author's amiable disposition and benevolence pervade the whole of his compositions. There is in them an artless simplicity, a virtuous rectitude of sentiment, an exquisite sensibility to the beautiful, which cannot fail to gratify every one who respects moral excellence and loves the delightful scenes of country life. The Farmer's Boy is divided into four books, named from the four seasons. The introductory account, in "Spring," of Giles's (as the "Farmer's Boy" is called) going out to his early morning work, is followed by a description of

MILKING.

Forth comes the maid, and like the morning smiles;
The mistress too, and follow'd close by Giles.

A friendly tripod forms their humble seat,

With pails bright scour'd and delicately sweet;
Where shadowing elms obstruct the morning ray,
Begins the work, begins the simple lay;

The full-charged udder yields its willing streams,
While Mary sings some lover's amorous dreams;
And crouching Giles beneath a neighboring tree
Tugs o'er his pail, and chants with equal glee,
Whose hat with tatter'd brim, of nap so bare,
From the cow's side purloins a coat of hair,
A mottled ensign of his harmless trade,
An unambitious, peaceable cockade.

Spring, 1. 181.

Giles, having fatigued himself by his endeavors to frighten a host of sparrows from the wheat-ears, retires to repose beneath the friendly shelter of some projecting boughs; and, while with head upon the ground he is gazing upon the heavens, he suddenly hears

1 The approbation first bestowed has steadily continued, notwithstanding the contemptuous derision of Byron in his English Bards.

But

malignant sneers at Bloomfield are more sure to injure the lampooner than the lampooned.

THE SKYLARK.

Just starting from the corn he cheerly sings,
And trusts with conscious pride his downy wings;
Still louder breathes, and in the face of day
Mounts up, and calls on Giles to mark his way.
Close to his eyes his hat he instant bends,
And forms a friendly telescope, that lends
Just aid enough to dull the glaring light,
And place the wandering bird before his sight,
That oft beneath a light cloud sweeps along,
Lost for a while, yet pours the varied song.
The eye still follows, and the cloud moves by,
Again he stretches up the clear blue sky;
His form, his motion, undistinguish'd quite,
Save when he wheels direct from shade to light,
The fluttering songster a mere speck became,
Like fancy's floating bubbles in a dream:
The gazer sees, but, yielding to repose,
Unwittingly his jaded eyelids close.

Delicious sleep! From sleep who could forbear,
With no more guilt than Giles, and no more care?
Peace o'er his slumbers waves her guardian wing,
Nor conscience once disturbs him with a sting;
He wakes refresh'd from every trivial pain,
And takes his pole and brushes round again.1

THE BLIND CHILD.

Where's the blind child so admirably fair,
With guileless dimples, and with flaxen hair
That waves in every breeze? He's often seen
Beyond yon cottage-wall, or on the green
With others, match'd in spirit and in size,
Health in their cheeks and rapture in their eyes.
That full expanse of voice, to children dear,
Soul of their sports, is duly cherish'd here.
And, hark! that laugh is his,-that jovial cry,—
He hears the ball and trundling hoop brush by,
And runs the giddy course with all his might-
A very child in every thing but sight-
With circumscribed, but not abated powers,
Play the great object of his infant hours.
In many a game he takes a noisy part,
And shows the native gladness of his heart;

Summer, 1. 63.

1 "The most beautiful part in the descrip- raising its note as it soars, until it seems lost tion of this bird, and which is at once curiously in the immense heights above us, the note faithful and expressively harmonious, I have continuing, the bird itself unseen; to see it copied in italics. Milton and Thomson have then descending with a swell as it comes from both introduced the flight of the skylark, the clouds, yet sinking by degrees as it apthe first with his accustomed spirit and sub-proaches its nest,-the spot where all its affeclimity; but probably no poet has surpassed. either in fancy or expression, the following prose narrative of Dr. Goldsmith, in his History of the Earth and Animated Nature :—— 'Nothing,' observes he, 'can be more pleasing than to see the lark warbling upon the wing,

tions are centred, the spot that has prompted all this joy.' This description of the descent of the bird and of the pleasures of its little nest is conceived in a strain of the most exquisite delicacy and feeling."-DR. DRAKE.

But soon he hears, on pleasure all intent,
The new suggestion and the quick assent;
The grove invites delight, thrills every breast
To leap the ditch and seek the downy nest.
Away they start, leave balls and hoops behind,
And one companion leave,-the boy is blind!
His fancy paints their distant paths so gay,
That childish fortitude a while gives way;
He feels his dreadful loss,-yet short the pain,-
Soon he resumes his cheerfulness again.
Pondering how best his moments to employ,
He sings his little songs of nameless joy,

Creeps on the warm green turf for many an hour,
And plucks by chance the white and yellow flower;
Smoothing their stems, while resting on his knees,
He binds a nosegay which he never sees;
Along the homeward path then feels his way,
Lifting his brow against the shining day,
And, with a joyful rapture round his eyes,
Presents a sighing parent with the prize!1

THE DISTRACTED FEMALE?

News from the Farm.

-Naught her rayless melancholy cheers,
Or soothes her breast, or stops her streaming tears.
Her matted locks unornamented flow,

Clasping her knees, and waving to and fro;
Her head bow'd down, her faded cheek to hide;
A piteous mourner by the pathway side.

Some tufted mole-hill through the livelong day
She calls her throne; there weeps her life away:
And oft the gayly-passing stranger stays
His well-timed step, and takes a silent gaze,
Till sympathetic drops unbidden start,

And pangs quick springing muster round his heart;
And soft he treads with other gazers round,

And fain would catch her sorrow's plaintive sound:
One word alone is all that strikes the ear,
One short, pathetic, simple word,-"Oh dear!"
A thousand times repeated to the wind,
That wafts the sigh, but leaves the pang behind!
Forever of the proffer'd parley shy,

She hears the unwelcome foot advancing nigh;
Nor quite unconscious of her wretched plight,
Gives one sad look, and hurries out of sight.

Fair promised sunbeams of terrestrial bliss,
Health's gallant hopes,-and are ye sunk to this?

1" When we consider the circumstances under which the early poetry of Bloomfield was composed,-in a bare, grim garret, by a feeble-constitutioned man approaching middle life, and amid the fatigues of mechanical labor, which yet scarcely sufficed to satisfy the clamant necessities of a wife and three children, The Farmer's Boy ought not to be regarded otherwise than as a wonderful produc

tion. Few are its errors in taste, either as to matter or manner; and its style is simple, chaste, unaffected, nay, occasionally elegant." -D. M. MOIR.

2"It presents as finished a specimen of versification as can be extracted from the pages of our most polished poets; and its pathos is such as to require no comment of mine."-DRAKE's Literary Hours, ii. 467.

For in life's road, though thorns abundant grow,
There still are joys poor Poll can never know;
Joys which the gay companions of her prime
Sip, as they drift along the stream of time;
At eve to hear beside their tranquil home
The lifted latch that speaks the lover come;
That love matured, next playful on the knee
To press the velvet lip of infancy;

To stay the tottering step, the features trace;
Inestimable sweets of social peace!

O Thou! who bid'st the vernal juices rise,
Thou, on whose blasts autumnal foliage flies!
Let Peace ne'er leave me, nor my heart grow cold,
Whilst life and sanity are mine to hold.1

THOMAS ERSKINE, 1750-1823.

THOMAS (Lord) ERSKINE, third son of the Earl of Buchan, was born in the year 1750, and was educated at the University of St. Andrews. After serving six years in the navy and army, he was induced, at the earnest request of his mother, who saw his talents, and jestingly said "he must be Lord Chancellor," to quit the military profession and prepare himself for the law. In 1778 he was called to the bar, where his success was immediate and remarkable. In a case of libel, in which he advocated the cause of the defendant, Captain Baillie, he displayed so much eloquence and talent that the legal world was astonished, and nearly thirty briefs were put into his hands before he left the court. In 1781 he appeared as counsel for Lord George Gordon, in what was called a case of constructive treason, and, by his wonderful skill and eloquence and legal learning, procured the acquittal of his client, and thus, for the time, gave the death-blow to the tremendous doctrine of constructive

treason.

But there is nothing in the life of this eminent man which reflects so much honor on his memory as his exertions in defence of the privileges of juries. The rights of those pro tempore judges he strenuously maintained upon all occasions, particularly in the celebrated trial of the Dean of St. Asaph for libel, in 1784, when Justice Buller refused to receive the verdict of "guilty of publishing only," as returned by the jury.3 In 1789 he again displayed his

1" From the review we have now taken of the Farmer's Boy, it will be evident, I think, that, owing to its harmony and sweetness of versification, its benevolence of sentiment and originality of imagery, it is entitled to rank very high in the class of descriptive and pastoral poetry, and that, most probably, it will descend to posterity with a character and with encomia similar to what has been the endeavor of these essays to attach to it."-DR. DRAKE.

2 On this occasion he showed that the conrage which marked his professional life was not acquired after the success which rendered it a safe and a cheap virtue, but, being naturally inherent in the man, was displayed at a moment when attended with great risks. In the

course of his eloquent argument he was in-
veighing very strongly against a certain " noble
lord," when the judge, Lord Mansfield, inter-
rupted him, and remarked that "Lord
was not before the court."

"I know he is not," was the bold reply; "but, for that very reason, I will bring him before the court. I will drag him to light who is the dark mover behind this scene of iniquity."

3 The following is a part of the spirited dialogue that ensued when the jury returned their verdict. It shows the noble daring and courage

of Erskine.

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