Even among those who confine themselves to this
lower plane, Bloomfield is not great: his small flame is
constantly sinking and flickering out. But at intervals it
burns up again and redeems the work from being wholly
commonplace and trivial. He is, in fact, no better than many
another small poet who has been devoured by Time since his
day, and whose work no person would now attempt to bring back.
It is probable, too, that many of these lesser singers whose
fame was brief would in their day have deeply resented being
placed on a level with the Suffolk peasant-poet. In spite of
all this, and of the impossibility of saving most of the verse
which is only passably good from oblivion, I still think the
Farmer's Boy worth preserving for more reasons than one, but
chiefly because it is the only work of its kind.
There is no lack of rural poetry--the Seasons to begin with
and much Thomsonian poetry besides, treating of nature in a
general way; then we have innumerable detached descriptions of
actual scenes, such as we find scattered throughout Cowper's
Task, and numberless other works. Besides all this there are
the countless shorter poems, each conveying an impression of
some particular scene or aspect of nature; the poet of the
open air, like the landscape painter, is ever on the look out
for picturesque "bits" and atmospheric effects as a subject.
In Bloomfield we get something altogether different--a simple,
consistent, and fairly complete account of the country
people's toilsome life in a remote agricultural district in
England--a small rustic village set amid green and arable
fields, woods and common lands.
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