“‘ To peace and virtue still be true,’
An anxious mother ever cries,
Who needs no present to renew
Parental love—which never dies.”
Many tributes of esteem, both in prose and verse, were paid to Bloomfield during his life and after his death. None of these was of more value than the brief sentence written by his constant friend and first literary patron, Mr. Capel Lofft, who says, “It is much to be a poet, such as he will be found: it is much more to be such a man.” The lines which appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine, the month after Bloomfield’s death, exactly describe the chief features of the poet’s life and work:
“No pompous learning—no parade
Of pedantry, and cumbrous lore,
On thy elastic bosom weighed;
Instead, were thine a mazy store
Of feelings delicately wrought,