Troston. 16 Nov: 1806
Dear Sir
... As to the Farmers Boy & all future works of Mr
Bloomfield I have done with them. Had the printer & publisher done me
justice this would have sufficiently appeared in my postscript to the
preface.
Mr Bloomfield has compelled me by a letter most unworthy of
himself & me to renounce all correspondence & conversation with
him for the future. And I have at length after 5 years plague & torment
which he has been continually almost giving me done with him. It was time I
should when he could say by leter that he suspected the character he had heard
of me was false of my being a man of feeling & unwilling to give any one
harm: and that if I came to town as I informed him I meant to do against Mr Fox's funeral he was not in a
train to see me and should do every thing in his power to avoid me.
I wrote an answer of about 3 lines renouncing of course all
future correspondence & conversation with a clown who would so forget
himself to me.
He took a months time and then yesterday I received a note from
him in the Magazine Parcel just as if nothing had happened informing me of his
tour in Kent & that since his return the printer had shown him my
Postscript that he askd whether they had printed it and was told no.
I wish you to see the postscript and to judge whether after
repeated [illegible word]-tions 4 or 5 times within 5 years every one nearly as
bad as the letter from which I have given you a specimen, that postscript were
not necessary and whether it were not mild moderate & favourable. Be it
remembered with all this that mr Bloomfield never pretended to me any quarrel or
ground of quarrel with me but about the preface with which he seemd quite
content from the publication till after the 3rd edition
unless it be that I told him of 7 or 8 lines which are like any thing rather
than blank verse or any kind of verse which he chose to publish as a fragment
and which I wisht him to omit as disgracing several good verses of which these
were a part. May I request that if the Monthly Mirror & Ladies Magazine
are still sent thither they may be sent in future to Mr Ingram of Burys London booksellers Messrs
Longman & Co—They
will thus reach me much more conveniently & earlier....
I am Dear Sir yrs with much regard
Capel Lofft
Address: Thomas Hill Esq, / Merchant, / Queenhythe, nr London.