15. Capel Lofft to Robert
Bloomfield, after November 1798 * (Extract) It is truly a rural Poem, more so than any with which I am acquainted in our language; except Allan Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd, [1] and Burns' Poems. [2] Notes* Published in 1809, p. xxxi BACK [1] Allan Ramsay's The Gentle Shepherd, A Scots Pastoral Comedy (Edinburgh, 1725) was a highly popular drama, including several songs, credited with creating a local and vernacular form of the pastoral ideal—and thus a model for Bloomfield. BACK [2] Robert Burns was a hero of Bloomfield's, as his subsequent letters and verse imitations show. See Letters 23, 32, 35 and 36. BACK |
|