Yet Honington was the
birthplace of Robert Bloomfield, known as "the Suffolk poet"
in the early part of the last century (although Crabbe was
living then and was great, as he is becoming again after many
years); while at Sapiston, the rustic village on the other
side of the old stone bridge, he acquired that love of nature
and intimate knowledge of farm life and work which came out
later in his Farmer's Boy. Finally, Troston, the little
village in which I write, was the home of Capel Lofft, a
person of importance in his day, who discovered Bloomfield,
found a publisher for his poems, and boomed it with amazing
success.
I dare say it will only provoke a smile of amusement in
readers of literary taste when I confess that Bloomfield's
memory is dear to me; that only because of this feeling for
the forgotten rustic who wrote rhymes I am now here, strolling
about in the shade of the venerable trees in Troston Park-the
selfsame trees which the somewhat fantastic Capel knew in his
day as "Homer," "Sophocles," "Virgil," "Milton," and by other
names, calling each old oak, elm, ash, and chestnut after one
of the immortals.
I can even imagine that the literary man, if he chanced to be
a personal friend, would try to save me from myself by begging
me not to put anything of this sort into print. He would warn
me that it matters nothing that Bloomfield's verse was
exceedingly popular for a time, that twenty-five or thirty
editions of his Farmer's Boy were issued within three years of
its publication in 1800 that it continued to be read for half
a century afterwards.
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