The Bloomfieldian Imagination and the Sublime: Notes on ‘To Immagination’ (1800), by Andrew Rudd

Bloomfield is familiar to us chiefly for his poetry of rural life and labour, but his long and exceptional poem ‘To Immagination’ shows him as a poet tackling what at the time were regarded as more ambitious subjects: the operation of the human imagination and the sublime. Bloomfield composed the poem in 1800 but it was not published in his lifetime. Tim Fulford’s invaluable article in Romanticism (Volume 15, No. 2, July 2009), where the manuscript was presented for the first time, describes Bloomfield’s wish to free himself from the poet-labourer tag which he had arguably acquired through the publication of his first major work The Farmer’s Boy (1800). Fulford and Sam Ward have both argued that, in ‘To Immagination’, Bloomfield was attempting a type of imaginative poem and a register of poetic diction which were both typically regarded as the preserve of the educated classes (see details of the fascinating discussion of the poem at the 2010 Annual Bloomfield Day contained in Newsletter No. 19). We know that Capel Lofft made editorial interventions through his usual means of tidying orthography and grammar and, in this instance, reworking the metre from the blank verse of the original into Neo-Classical heroic couplets. As we know from the letters, Bloomfield resisted this and so the manuscript remained, in Fulford’s words, ‘a fragile, though powerful, experiment that crystallises some of the most significant issues for poets in the early nineteenth century’. [1]  I wish to take my cue from this suggestive description of the poem and will discuss, firstly, some existing models of imaginative poetry which acted as possible influences on Bloomfield; and secondly, to explore in more detail the nature of the Bloomfieldian imagination and particularly its response to human suffering and the challenge of the sublime. Being partly an act of emulation, and stylistically Bloomfield’s most ambitious work, ‘To Immagination’ is obviously indebted to well-known earlier poems of the mid-eighteenth century such as Edwards Young’s Night Thoughts (1742-5) and Mark Akenside’s The Pleasures of the Imagination (1744). [2]  It is composed in the style familiar from the works of Alexander Pope and employs typical Neo-Classical machinery such as the opening apostrophe addressed to Imagination: ‘Stay sleepless guest! aierial trav’ler stay’ (1). [3]  With its keen sense of topography and the natural world, Bloomfield’s poem may well owe a debt to Joel Barlow’s The Vision of Columbus (1787) and Erasmus Darwin’s The Botanic Garden (1791), and to the former’s Southern American setting in particular. I would like to discuss two other possible influences on the poem, the first James Beattie’s The Minstrel; or, the Progress of Genius (1771-74) and the second a hugely popular work published immediately before Bloomfield was writing, Thomas Campbell’s The Pleasures of Hope (1799). It is worth noting that, in a letter to his brother George dated 15 June 1800, Bloomfield records that his publisher, Thomas Hood, gave him a copy of Campbell’s poem when the two men met in London. [4]  The manuscript of ‘To Immagination’ is dated May 1800, but it is not inconceivable that Bloomfield had expressed an interest in Campbell’s poem or even read a copy that had been lent to him.

What connects the three works is that they each explore the operations of a particular faculty of the human mind: respectively, genius, hope and imagination. Imagination is the means of linking the other two with its capacity to call absent objects into being before the mind’s eye and, before the Romantics granted a privileged status to imagination in its own right, was seen as the facilitator of other, higher mental processes. In The Minstrel, Beattie offers a didactic and cautionary message about the free vagrancy of imagination. The work also associates the wayward fancy with the untutored lower orders, whom the more experienced, and certainly more learned, poet frequently chides. The Minstrel follows Edwin, described as a ‘visionary boy’ and ‘poor imp’ who roams the Scottish wilds and scorns his father’s homespun injunction to ‘let man’s sphere confine his view’. [5]  But he has no such wish to remain a mute, inglorious Milton: his rhapsodic wanderings form a significant portion of the first part of the work, whilst Beattie warns us that ‘Romantic visions swarm on Edwin’s soul’ (p. 67). Towards the end of the poem, Edwin encounters a hermit who urges the boy to return to his more sequestered former life. In doing so, the hermit conjures an Arcadian view of rural simplicity which concludes ‘Hail poverty! If honor, wealth, and art, / If what the great pursue, and learned admire, / Thus dissipate the soul’s ethereal fire’ (p. 72). This attitude towards imagination as a socially destabilising force, which arguably remained influential at the time Bloomfield was writing, was hardly likely to find favour with the cobbler and former farm labourer. It is tempting, therefore, to regard Bloomfield’s vision of imagination as a conscious departure from this aspect of Beattie’s poem. We could go further and see the figure of the hermit as an effective proxy for Lofft. During one conversation in the poem, Edwin receives a lesson on poetic genius in which his Romantic ‘enthusiasm’ is tempered into Beattie’s approved doctrine of Neo-Classical idealism:

Of late, with cumbersome, though pompous show,
Edwin would oft his flowery rhyme deface,
Through ardour to adorn; but Nature now
To his experienced eye a modest grace
Presents, where Ornament the second place
Holds, to intrinsic worth and just design
Subservient still. Simplicity apace
Tempers his rage: he owns her charm divine,
And clears th’ambiguous phrase, and lops th’unwieldly line (p. 87)

. The ‘unwieldly’ 12-syllable Alexandrine which constitutes the final line is a poetical joke, which again points us to the somewhat recondite nature of this genre of poem; the poet shares his witticism directly with the reader who is presumed to be similarly learned. The sort of attitude towards the untutored imagination lends poignancy to Bloomfield’s reference in the opening lines of ‘To Immagination’ to ‘the eyes of those…whom Fortune always favours, but not mine’ (13-15). Bloomfield’s version of the imagination, I suggest, not only offered the narrative disembodiment necessary to transcend his farm-labourer reputation, as Fulford has detailed, but also mental release from physically oppressive circumstances. This second quality is almost tangible as Bloomfield urges imagination to ‘Mount through the regions of the whistling wind…stretch on thy cloudless way, and lightly scim / O’er Chili’s hills, Peru’s enchanting groves, / Scenes that unfetter’d fancy dearly loves’ (19-24), a yearning for escape comparable to the opening of Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale’.

A second possible influence on ‘To Immagination’ is Campbell’s Pleasures of Hope, a best-seller of its day which would have been reasonably familiar to reading circles across the country – which may explain Hood’s gift of the poem to Bloomfield in 1800. In this poem, imagination appears as an emancipating spirit rather than as an errant, or even a usurping, act of mind, as it does in Beattie. Reflecting social changes as well as developments in attitudes to the subject more widely, Campbell’s imagination is a democratized force that is accessible to, and capable of benefitting, people from all social backgrounds. Like Bloomfield’s poem, The Pleasures of Hope embarks on a thrilling flight of imagination that crosses oceans and soars above continents, yet it still takes note of individual cases of pity and distress; a distinctive dynamic which, I suggest, the two poems have in common. Whereas Beattie’s hermit urges Edwin to confine his view to the domestic sphere, Campbell exhorts imagination to summon up ‘every form, that Fancy can repair / From dark oblivion’. [6]  Addressing fancy directly, the poet commands ‘thy glittering wings explore / Earth’s loneliest bounds, and Ocean’s wildest shore’, ‘Behring’s rocks’, ‘Greenland’s naked isles’ and ‘Oonalaska’s shore’ (pp. 7-8). Hope and imagination are to Campbell ‘inseparable agents’ (p. 49). In this poem, we see this pairing bringing consolation to the poor man and woman ‘unpitied by the world, unknown to fame’. ‘O there, prophetic Hope! thy smile bestow, / And chase the pangs that worth should never know’ (p. 18). Bloomfield’s imagination similarly carries him high above the Americas, leaving behind the haunts of man and revelling in the glories of the natural world. The parallels to Darwin’s The Botanic Garden are clear as the poet delineates hills and dales, mountains and rivers and luxuriant vegetation thronged with exotic animals and birds. The aerial flight of the mind’s eye is thrillingly executed and is a fine artistic achievement on Bloomfield’s part. Yet, once again, Bloomfield distinguishes his version of imagination as if in reaction to an established model. Campbell’s emphasis on hope, quite logically, leads him on to hail ‘bright Improvement’, who tills the soil and fells the tree (p. 26). Bloomfield, on the other hand, and perhaps with an ex-countryman’s surfeit of ploughed earth, hankers instead after a virgin landscape ‘where human foot ne’er trod’ (73). In his poem, human activity is associated with depredation and greed. The gold in the mountains led the conquering Spaniard to enslave the ‘native masters of the soil’, who have ‘borne / From age to age, with never-conqueror’s lash, and toil’d for others gain’ (113-5).

The enslaved Indian, a sun worshipper denied in the recesses of the mine access to his god, accuses the mountain of enticing the foe with its ‘whispering wealth’ and of gilding the warriors dreams’ (137). Here perhaps we see Bloomfield’s natural empathy with a labourer ‘for others gain’, admittedly sharpened considerably here into the condition of a slave.

Intriguingly, Bloomfield questions imagination directly, asking ‘heard thou…misery’s accents fly to grace divine?’ (148-50) and putting in doubt imagination’s power to respond effectively to revealed suffering. There is an aporetic note here that distinquishes Bloomfield from the more optimistic Campbell. Similarly, as Bloomfield’s poem swoops on along the course of the Amazon, Bloomfield rebuffs Campbell’s doctrine of hopeful improvement, praising instead ‘Woods, where the echoing Axe was never heard; / Nor Man e er proudly said, with hand upreard, / Thy course thou silver current shall be here, / Grow there dark Forest; be that Valley clear’ (182-5). Instead, he insists that ‘Nature’s triumphant glories are their own (189). In this landscape, the ‘Tawny Nations’ (meaning the Indian inhabitants of the country), pursue lives of Rousseau-like simplicity, heavily laced with the motif of the noble savage. The native warrior hunts, he does not farm, he disdains restraint and ‘nature only needs’. Lest we forget, this is also, of course, the Amazon: ‘Where with firm step, and eye indignant seen, / With Amazonian hardiness of mien, / The Female lifts the shield, disdaining fear, / And grasps by turns her infant and her spear’ (230-3).We can view these passages as mere formulaic compounds of stock poetic imagery, or take the more interesting biographical view that hints at Bloomfield’s complex attitude towards land and landscape.

The connection between tended land and human evil is reinforced in the next section of the poem, which crosses the sea to the West Indies, where the poet sees the changeless prospect of tended lawns and plantations. These conceal the infinite horror of African slave labour. Again, Bloomfield invokes imagination as a spur to humanitarian sentiment, this time addressing his (English) readers directly as he adjures us to ‘Glance but thine eye across Th’ Atlantic wave, / The negros mourning ends but in the grave’ (212-3). Here, hope, Campbell’s lodestar, is ‘like a budless stem’ which ‘from day to day / No tempting fruit lets fall, to chear his way’ (274-5). Again, we detect a measure of fellow-feeling when Bloomfield denounces ‘That worst of ills amidst a wretched whole, / That death of Genius, dead weight on the soul, / Labour without reward’ (281-2). There are, incidentally, only a few moments in this poem when Bloomfield breaks his sentences across the middle of a line, creating a jarring, arresting effect. This is one of them. Another follows immediately as Bloomfield asks ‘what avails when avarice holds the bar, / Truth’s inspiration;? pitty’s wordy war? / Most unavailing mine’ (288-90). The tone is strikingly bitter and again Bloomfield seems to doubt imagination’s efficacy as a means of redress. Thwarted, his imagination, ‘claimant of my vagrant song’ (291), quits the scene.

In the slightly obscure final section of the poem, the idea of imagination as a force for good accessible by all modulates into a reflection of the outward limits of the human mind. Turning northwards to Canada, the poet beholds the mighty cataract of the Niagara Falls. This panoramic ‘complicated scene’ (304) is challenge enough to visualize and Bloomfield adopts the register of the sublime to convey ‘horror’s indescribable recess’ (335), the dizzying chasm of the waterfall. But this attempt to elevate his register leads him almost immediately to consider the insufficiency of human utterance. Treatment of the sublime carried its own set of conventions and space does not permit me to rehearse them here, but Bloomfield opens up a gap at this point between timeless nature – the stuff of the sublime – and language’s power to describe natural wonders such as the waterfall. The ‘Inchanting horrors’ were formed ‘in the infancy of time’ and their greatness ‘defied language’ and (significantly) also ‘Defy’d Immagination’s bolder flights’ (336-341). Lest the reader thinks the modern poet will now attempt what his forbears failed to do, Bloomfield makes clear that he will not artificially strain his muse in this way. Instead, he posits that sublime spectacle will always confound representation, for ‘bellowing depths and heights’ speak through ‘times revolving hour, / “Thee we deride, and mock the pencil’s power”’. At the end of this passage Bloomfield describes his imagination as ‘foild’ (339-44).

Turning from nature, the poet is cheered by what he describes as ‘a friendly vision in thy train’ (344) in form of refracted light creating an angelic vision in the water vapour. This grants Bloomfield a second wind. He describes the voyages to the new world of missionaries, who taught ‘mankind / A more devotional and purer praise; / And preached the living God a thousand ways’ (369-71) and so atoned for the sins of the conquistadores. But it is the refulgent moonlight which inspires a fresh and final transport and which summons up an imagined but no less fervent hymn to the Creator God, sung by the tribesmen ranged along the waterside:

‘To him, who here upon your fruitfull ball
These traits of greatness from your hand let fall;
Who gave the wand’ring world in hallow’d hour
These feeble glim’rings of his mighty power,
Ye Nations let your chorus mount on high,
His glory be the theme; let echo fly (400-5)

At the climax of the poem, the nations shout, the forests howl, the angels sing and the earth shakes in reply. Here, we are in the territory of high Romantic exultation, Bloomfield’s muse poised on the most daring pinnacle. Can he sustain this pitch? The question for him, rather, is whether an authentic, human voice such as his can, or even should, sustain it. Words failing him, the poet’s more eloquent tears ‘gush forth…speech of the soul, that never dwelt in sound’ (419-21). The overriding impression here is Bloomfield’s consciousness of mortal weaknesses and his aversion to poetic hubris. He credits imagination for ‘ardent mounting high, / To prostrate worlds, to Immortality’ but begs to be spared ‘jaded from thy daring flights’ (422-6). ‘Domestick peace’ and ‘connubial love’ once more invite his exhausted vision: he concludes ‘I yield’ (427-8) and the poem ends with the conventional figure of a seraph pointing aloft, signifying eternal happiness and song.

How then do we categorize Bloomfield’s notions of imagination? Did he feel he was trespassing in social and stylistic territory that was not his own, and so deliberately brought imagination back to earth at the moment it dared to touch the sublime? His refusal to accept Lofft’s proposed emendations suggests, to the contrary, a personal pride in this particular poem and unwillingness to compromise. We see in ‘To Immagination’ Bloomfield’s affinity with the downtrodden, his harking back to an age of natural simplicity and authenticity and his scorn for over-cultivation, all facilitated by the workings of an imagination that is categorized by reticence, even modesty, that personally I find very attractive. His is a Romantic but a personal voice, which combines elements familiar from celebrated figures such as Beattie and Campbell as well as other influences. Bloomfield was obviously alert to established poetic models of imagination yet he turned them in an entirely individual direction that we may reasonably assume was bound up in his personal experiences. In closing, I submit that Bloomfield’s ‘Creating power,! sweet florist of the mind’ (252) offers a corrective to some of the worst faults of the Romantics, solipsism and egoism, and we should credit him for the depiction of a questing but also questioning imagination, which is continually alert to its own integrity.

Andrew Rudd teaches Romantic and colonial literature at the Open University in London.

[1] Tim Fulford, ‘To ‘crown with glory the romantick scene’: Robert Bloomfield’s ‘To Immagination’ and the Discourse of Romanticism’, Romanticism Volume 15, Number 2 (July 2009), 180-200 (190). For evidence of tension between Bloomfield and Lofft on the subject of the poem, see letters 49 and 70 of The Letters of Robert Bloomfield and his Circle, ed. Fulford and Lynda Pratt. BACK

[2] An edition of The Poetical Works of Mark Akenside dating from circa 1798-1800 is part (No. 6) of the Inskip Book Collection owned by Ed Fordham. It is highly likely that the collection includes books from Bloomfield’s personal library which were given to Inskip on, or before, Bloomfield’s death in 1823. BACK

[3] All line references from ‘To Immagination’ are from the MS printed in Fulford, ‘To “crown with glory the romantick scene”. BACK

[4] Robert Bloomfield to George Bloomfield (15 June 1800), letter 32 of The Letters of Robert Bloomfield and his Circle. BACK

[5] James Beattie, The Minstrel; or, The Progress of Genius: and other Poems. To which is prefixed, A Life of the Author (Edinburgh: Thomas Oliver, 1804), p. 47. BACK

[6] Thomas Campbell, The Pleasures of Hope, with Other Poems (Edinburgh: Mundell, Doig and Stevenson, 1808), p. 4. BACK