Bloomfield, Robert

(1766-1823)

   Poet, b. at Honington in Suffolk, lost his f. when he was a year old, and received the rudiments of education from his mother, who kept the village school. While still a boy he went to London, and worked as a shoemaker under an elder brother, enduring extreme poverty. His first and chief poem, The Farmer's Boy, was composed in a room where half a dozen other men were at work, and the finished lines he carried in his head until there was time to write them down. The manuscript, after passing through various hands, fell into those of Capel Lofft, a Suffolk squire of literary tastes, by whose exertions it was pub. with illustrations by Bewick in 1800. It had a signal success, 26,000 copies having been sold in three years. The Duke of Grafton obtained for him an appointment in the Seal Office, and when, through ill-health, he was obliged to resign this, allowed him a pension of 1s. a day. Other works were Rural Tales (1804), Wild Flowers (1806), The Banks of the Wye (1811), and May Day with the Muses (1817). An attempt to carry on business as a bookseller failed, his health gave way, his reason was threatened, and he d. in great poverty at Shefford in 1823. B.'s poetry is smooth, correct, and characterised by taste and good feeling, but lacks fire and energy. Of amiable and simple character, he was lacking in self-reliance.