Those who would estimate Mr. Drew’s mental powers, should bear in mind the difficulties which he surmounted. From education he derived no assistance. His youth was passed in ignorance and poverty; and he was twenty years of age, before he began to read or to think. Yet before he attained the meridian of life he had accumulated a vast fund of knowledge. Nor was that knowledge limited to the subjects on which he wrote; it extended to various branches of science; and there were few topics of speculative philosophy, with which he was unacquainted.
ROBERT BLOOMFIELD.
The preceding sketches record the names of individuals who have severally distinguished themselves in statesmanship, patriotism, philanthropy, eloquence, and metaphysics. It is pleasing to add to our list, one whose name is familiar as an English pastoral poet.
Robert Bloomfield was born at the village of Honington, Suffolk county, England, December 3, 1766, and was the youngest of six children. His father, George Bloomfield, was a tailor, and died before his youngest son was a year old, leaving his widow to obtain a scanty subsistence for herself and family, by teaching a small school, in which Robert was taught to read. Two or three months’ instruction in writing was all the scholastic accomplishment that he ever obtained. At the age of eleven he was hired in the neighborhood as a farmer’s boy, but being found too feeble for agricultural labor, he was placed with an elder brother in London, to learn the trade of a shoemaker.
“In the garret where five of us worked,” his brother writes, “I received little Robert. As we were all single men, lodgers at a shilling per week each, our beds were coarse, and all things far from being clean and snug. Robert was our man to fetch all things to hand. At noon he fetched our dinner from the cook’s shop; and any of our fellow-workmen, that wanted to have anything brought in, would send him, and assist in his work, and teach him as a recompense for his trouble.
“Every day when the boy from the public house came for the pewter-pots, and to hear what porter was wanted, he always brought the yesterday’s newspaper. The reading of the paper we had been used to take by turns; but after Robert came, he mostly read for us, because his time was of least value. He frequently met with words that he was unacquainted with; of this he often complained. I bought a small dictionary for him. By the help of this, he in a little time could read and comprehend the long and beautiful speeches of Burke, Fox, and North.”
When about sixteen years of age, Robert had an opportunity to read Thomson’s “Seasons”—which was a favorite book with him—Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” and a few novels. Soon afterward, he left the employment of his brother, and spent a few months in his native county, with the farmer with whom he had formerly lived; and here free from the smoke and noise of London, he imbibed that love of rural simplicity and innocence, which he afterward displayed in his poems.
Returning to his trade of shoemaker in London, he was bound to Mr. John Dudbridge, and after he was of age, worked as journeyman for Davies, ladies’ shoemaker. In a garret, while at work with six or seven others, he composed his beautiful rural poem, “The Farmer’s Boy.” A great part of this poem was composed by him, without committing one line to paper. When it was thus prepared, he said, “I had nothing to do but to write it down.” By this mode of composition, he studied and completed his “Farmer’s Boy,” in a garret, among his fellow-workmen, without their ever suspecting or knowing anything of the matter. That the reader may judge of the merits of this poem, we quote the invocation:—
“O come, blest spirit! whatsoe’er thou art,
Thou kindling warmth that hoverest round my heart,
Sweet inmate, hail! thou source of sterling joy,
That poverty itself can not destroy,
Be thou my muse; and faithful still to me,
Retrace the paths of wild obscurity.
No deeds of arms, my humble lines rehearse.
No Alpine wonders thunder through my verse.
The roaring cataract, the snow-topt hill.
Inspiring awe, till breath itself stands still;
Nature’s sublimer scenes ne’er charmed mine eyes,
Nor science led me through the boundless skies,
From meaner objects far, my raptures flow,
O point these raptures! bid my bosom glow!
And lead my soul to ecstasies of praise.
For all the blessings of my infant days.
Bear me through regions where gay fancy dwells,
But mould to Truth’s fair form, what memory tells.”
The manuscript of “the Farmer’s Boy,” after being offered to and refused by several London publishers, was printed under the patronage of Capel Lofft, Esq., in 1800; and the admiration it produced was so great, that within three years after its publication, more than 26,000 copies were sold. The appearance of such refinement of taste and sentiment in the person of an indigent artisan, elicited general applause. An edition was published in the following year at Leipsic. It was also translated into French, Italian, and Latin.