There are two poets still living who belong to the same class of excellence, and of whom I shall here say a few words; I mean Crabbe, and Robert Bloomfield, the author of the Farmer’s Boy.  As a painter of simple natural scenery, and of the still life of the country, few writers have more undeniable and unassuming pretensions than the ingenious and self-taught poet, last-mentioned.  Among the sketches of this sort I would mention, as equally distinguished for delicacy, faithfulness, and naivete, his description of lambs racing, of the pigs going out an acorning, of the boy sent to feed his sheep before the break of day in winter; and I might add the innocently told story of the poor bird-boy, who in vain through the live-long day expects his promised companions at his hut, to share his feast of roasted sloes with him, as an example of that humble pathos, in which this author excels.  The fault indeed of his genius is that it is too humble:  his Muse has something not only rustic, but menial in her aspect.  He seems afraid of elevating nature, lest she should be ashamed of him.  Bloomfield very beautifully describes the lambs in springtime as racing round the hillocks of green turf:  Thomson, in describing the same image, makes the mound of earth the remains of an old Roman encampment.  Bloomfield never gets beyond his own experience; and that is somewhat confined.  He gives the simple appearance of nature, but he gives it naked, shivering, and unclothed with the drapery of a moral imagination.  His poetry has much the effect of the first approach of spring, “while yet the year is unconfirmed,” where a few tender buds venture forth here and there, but are chilled by the early frosts and nipping breath of poverty.—­It should seem from this and other instances that have occurred within the last century, that we cannot expect from original genius alone, without education, in modern and more artificial periods, the same bold and independent results as in former periods.  And one reason appears to be, that though such persons, from whom we might at first expect a restoration of the good old times of poetry, are not encumbered and enfeebled by the trammels of custom, and the dull weight of other men’s ideas; yet they are oppressed by the consciousness of a want of the common advantages which others have; are looking at the tinsel finery of the age, while they neglect the rich unexplored mine in their own breasts; and instead of setting an example for the world to follow, spend their lives in aping, or in the despair of aping, the hackneyed accomplishments of their inferiors.  Another cause may be, that original genius alone is not sufficient to produce the highest excellence, without a corresponding state of manners, passions, and religious belief:  that no single mind can move in direct opposition to the vast machine of the world around it; that the poet can do no more than stamp the mind of his age upon his works; and that all that the ambition of the highest