186. Robert Bloomfield to George
Bloomfield, [after May 1806]*
Thursday Night
Dear George
The delay of the parcel has enabled me to send you a letter from
sister Bet received Thursday
in a packet from cousin Isaac to his friends.
You say that you and I did not think just
alike as to the preface, very likely not. But we thought alike on the subject of
Mr L's eternal additions, and you
knew then and was witness in some degree to the dislike of
the readers to certain parts of the preface. Of this you and I talked much
during the short intercourse we had at Bury and at Honington. I
had assured you, as one who would hear it though Mr L would not, that in all companies
wherein the subject had been mentioned, the sentiment was the same, invariably the same. I have never seen nor heard the man or woman who,
speaking of the subject did not applaud his zeal for me, and at the same time
either condemn with anger, or ridicule his want of judgment, his arrogance, or
his vanity; just which they happen'd to hit upon, as in their opinion the most
applicable. I have several letters by me from unknown hands abusing him for
going too far, in particular for his notes at the foot of the page in the Rural
Tales, his 'simply pleasing' was to my knowledge a bye word among the young
ladies at a boarding school. What ideas they attached to it to make them giggle
may easily be divined. I know two high authorities in the Literary world, one of
them cut out the notes with his pen knife, and the other would not suffer the
copy to enter his library, but destroy'd it when he could procure one that had
them not. The former is a friend of CL, and lives at Stamford, and was the
man who wrote the Review of my Wild Flowers in the Mirror. [1] I have had conversations with at
least a dozen Gentlemen in different lines of connection at Edenborough who
describe the same sentiments strongly expressed there, and as universally as in
England. Archer the Great Bookseller at Dublin told me the very same tale of the
Literati of the Sister Country, and Stansbury, late a Bookseller at New York
gave (voluntarily) the same evidence exactly respecting the people of America,
and in the editions of the Rural Tales printed there the notes were left out. I
have seen a Gentleman lately from the North of Germany (now in your town) who
mentioned to me with peculiar disgust the same hacknied worn out subject. They
all cry 'why dont you tell the man he is doing too much?' or something to that
effect. Now George what does
the little man say to me when I would broach this. Why he says, truly, that I
have nothing to do with it! here he is egregiously wrong. Does he forget that I
have constantly to hear him ridiculed and abus'd and is this nothing? I do not
pretend to assert that two years ago you knew just as well as I did how strong
the outcry was against him, but this I assert, that you know a great deal indeed of it, and therefore when your Note* stated to
him that the opposers of him and his tyranny were only a few of the 'hangers on'
of that Bookseller with whom you knew he had an inveterate
quarrel you did, (I hope) more mischief than you intended. that man would listen
to Tom Cat if he could flatter him, so dont pretend that you are too obscure and
too humble to be able to do mischief. (whether intended or not.) Were I to take
it as a risible subject, there is abundance of room for can anyone conceive a
poor fellow more universally loaded with hangers on! There is something in that
same letter of yours respecting Windham, which from Nats and my own sentiments differ so horribly that I think I shall
one day send it you with a few notes, that you may see if I have understood it
right or wrong'd you when I deem'd you a turntail and a shufler, and that at a pinch, you would swallow professions by pailfulls and
glory in the unhappiness you had wrought. Whatever blame you might have heap'd
upon Hood at that time (or this)
would be sure to be wellcome at Troston.
You will perceive by the tone of this letter that it will be well to send it me
again. I am only speaking in it to you, and send the
enclosed** too, at any time convenient.
R. B.
* I have sought in vain for the letter I meant to send, it is in my
wilderness void. I have no more time
**letter to CL about May 1805