Star.
London, England, 1829-11-05 00:00:00

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD.

In looking to an author's merits, one of the first things
to consider is, whether be fills a place which there would be no
one to supply were it vacant. and whether it is a place which it is
useful to have filled? I think that Bloomfield will abide these two
tests. More vigorous poets, and of a higher class of invention,
may easily be found; but he is original. natural, moral, and paints
a condition of society which has never been so naturally and beau-
tifully painted before. He has a set of simple and homely, but in-
teresting images, which have never before been ventured upon.
His pathos, though not deep, is always touching and pure, and sur-
prises one at what seems to be at once within every day's observaa
Lion and yet quite new. The very circumstance of its having been
untouched because it was familiar, makes the boldneu of touching
it the more captivating : as it is the reverse of exaggeration, so its
contrast with modern poetry gives it the more striking attraction.
Bloomfield has no artifice of poetry ; be never uses the political
phraseology of the common place book ; his diction is admirably
idiomatic ; he is every where the poet of real life—not of a
factitious and fantastic enthusiasm ; his productions are the
unaffected and glowing mirrors of his own sensitive and amiable
mind.

It is very true that be was not altogether a happy man : I saw
him gloomy, constrained, uneasy, and even dull. He seemed to
be thrown out ot his sphere, from habits too strongly contracted
to relax again. He bad a lively sense, and even morbid fearful-
ness, of propriety. Long habits of corporeal labour made a life
of mental abstraction dangerous to his health: he seemed over-
whelmed with ennui, and cheerless and despondent. He had
leisure to ponder upon his forlorn condition, and to pine at the
disappointment of those golden dreams of fame with which
every genius enters life. His knowledge was not equal to those
devouring faculties of intellect, which required perpetual food.
He was totally free from fatigue and enterprise ; and from his
probity and extreme guilelessness, be knew not how to make i
fortune or procure a competence.
Yet we must not judge of him from his hours of listless disap-
pointment, or constrained intercourse with society. He who
could write such poems must have had days and even weeks of
raptures. A shadowy half-gleaming image of the mind, drawn
into shape, and embodied in breathing words—a tender and
thrilling emotion of the heart forced out from Its fountain, and
painted in glowing and fadeless colours—formed creations oa
which he must have pored enamoured for weeks : and, as almost
all his pieces were, in their characteristic excellencies. mimed up
with the most tender and lovely moralities, his delight was
sanctioned by his reflection, judgment, and conscience—and his
raptures composed themselves into that "sober certainty of
bliss," which the hope of a virtuous fame, and the trust to be
kindly remembered after death, seldom fail to bestow.
A large portion of those who aspire to be poets are mere artists
in words, mere dealers in sounding metaphors, which only stir up
a few vague ideas of the memory, and scarcely touch the surface of
the higher powers of the mind, while they do not excite the
weakest emotion in the bosons. And of this sort of compositions
it may nut be uncandidly said, that, of all the barren products
which load the press, it is the most fatiguing and the most artless.
Bot Bloomfield never drew from books, and nester wrote after a
model. He looked outward upon the real floe of the material
world, and inward upon his own bosom; and his penetrating eye
seized upon features, which brought back to his reader all the
images and scenery which he wished to present to them. We hear
of " The Romance of Real Life :" Bloomfield's is the real poetry
of the cottage life. Peasants in their most uneducated condition
must assent to the likeness of their better nature. Instead of find-
ing under a country gash Arcadian shepherds, and the fantastic
ravings of impassive lovers, the humble labourer finds himself
softened and contorted by this unadorned portrait of his better
affections, and intellectual sympathy with the tastes of the edu-
cated and the rich. Among the numerous and scarcely calculable
writers of English verse, I would hesitate to put twenty above
Robert Bloomfield. It would be well if children were taught his
poems among the earliest lessons of poetry ; and I am confident it
would improve both their benevolence and their understanding. At
every returning year the cottage children of the neighbouring vil-
lages should be taught to sing hymns over this amiable poet's grave.

A tenant of Sir Tito mita LETUBRIDG E has placed the
tin figure of a man as a weather-cock upon the top of his chimney,
and every day walk. into his yard, and. looking up, inquire,.
" Which way is Sir Thorns. this morning ?" Wollner's Eager
Casette.

On Tuesday evening, a very daring robbery was com-
mitted iu the New Kent Road, near New Cross Turnpike. A
foreign gentleman, who was travelling in a post-chalse trout Do-
ver, while ►ittiog in the vehicle. observed two men jump up in
front, and immediately commence cutting away the leather straps
of a portmanteau that was made fast to that part of the chaise im-
mediately under the poatilliun's seat. On observing the fellows,
the gentleman let down one of the front windows, and called out ;
but before the post•boy had time to pull up, the men jumped off,
together with the portmanteau, and ran down a narrow lane, fol-
lowed by the gentleman, who ran until he was alarmed to rue any
farther, owing to the lanswimeness of the place, and the darknen
which prevailed at the time. The gentleman, being likewise.ant-
ions to reach town, gave information of what bid OCcirrearneir
• the spot, and.ffiorgess, the constable. proceeded in the direction
the thieves bad taken, and at some distance from lift high, Fosd,
pupery-ground, found the portmanteau," but emptied of
Itlcoidents. The miner of it matrOated, iooteafter the:rlObboil,
titatit Contained; besides clothes, a ennelderable stud antotier,:in
..Nipolenei sod dollsn.