100. Robert Bloomfield to George
Bloomfield, 16 November 1802* Tuesday Afternoon Nov 16 1802 Dear George You will find a long scrawl to Mr L pray read it, and to help you to
comprehend it, I must say that he has proposed to amend the Sky lark [1] (spoil it); to introduce notes that would tell allmost how often
I go to the Necessary, and throughout greeting my back with an unmercifull
flagellation for giving myself up to the Booksellers. These
are old topicks revived, and you can judge somthing about them. All that I mind
now is, that this string of denials which I now send and which I will abide at
all events, may sour his mind as to Nat and Gedge, but it will not do for me to flinch through
circumstances on a point that to me and my name is of the last importance.
Perhaps all may jog on right, if it do not so it shall go I am
determind.
All well here—
Robert Mr L desires me to request Nat to write to Gedge an order for him to lett Mr Hill have the sheets of his poems [2]
this to yourself— Farewell—
I send you the first Vollm of Burns, [3] not doubting but
youl find it interesting.— Notes
* BL Add. MS 28268, f. 115 BACK [1] Perhaps lines 446–64 of 'Summer' from The Farmer's Boy:
When Music waking speaks the sky-lark nigh
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 wand'ring bird before his sight,
That oft beneath a light cloud sweeps along,
Lost for awhile, 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:
E'en then the songster a mere speck became,
Gliding like fancy's bubbles in a dream,
The gazer sees; but yielding to repose,
Unwittingly his jaded eyelids close.
BACK
[2] Peter Gedge, printer and newspaper proprietor of Bury,
had been printing Nathaniel Bloomfield's poems, intending to publish
them in a volume. Clearly Lofft was determined that they should be
checked by the experienced Thomas Hill, editor of The Monthly
Mirror. They were published in 1803 under the name of Vernor
and Hood in London, as An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington
Green, a Ballad ... and Other Poems. BACK [3] Bloomfield was
reading the first volume of The Works of Robert Burns: with an
Account of his Life, and a Criticism on his Writings, 4
vols. (Liverpool, London and Edinburgh, 1800). BACK |
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