SOURCE: Review of The Farmer's Boy, by Robert Bloomfield. Monthly Review, or Literary Journal 32 (September 1800): 50-56.

In the following excerpt, the reviewer notes Bloomfield's elevation of his rustic subject through unaffected and eloquent poetry.

This poem [The Farmer's Boy] is ushered into the world under the obstetric auspices of the ingenious Mr. Capel Lofft, but it is the production of a journeyman shoemaker, who was himself originally destined to be a Farmer's Boy. The preface contains some particulars of his life, communicated by his brother to Mr. Lofft; whence it appears that the only literary instructions which he ever had he received from his mother in reading, and from a country schoolmaster in writing, for the space of two or three months. He was afterward sent to London, to his brother, in order to learn to make shoes; and there he continued till, in consequence of the dispute...