ROBERT BLOOMFIELD, 1766-1823. It is not quaint and local terms 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; A friendly tripod forms their humble seat, With pails bright scour'd and delicately sweet; The full-charged udder yields its willing streams, 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, Delicious sleep! From sleep who could forbear, THE BLIND CHILD. Where's the blind child so admirably fair, 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, Creeps on the warm green turf for many an hour, THE DISTRACTED FEMALE? News from the Farm. -Naught her rayless melancholy cheers, Clasping her knees, and waving to and fro; Some tufted mole-hill through the livelong day And pangs quick springing muster round his heart; And fain would catch her sorrow's plaintive sound: She hears the unwelcome foot advancing nigh; Fair promised sunbeams of terrestrial bliss, 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, To stay the tottering step, the features trace; O Thou! who bid'st the vernal juices rise, 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- "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. |