:io2 IIEXRY KIRKE WHITE*S REMAINS. 



the meed due to his deserts. Posterity will judge im- 

 partially : and if bold and vivid images, and original 

 conceptions, luminously displayed and judiciously op- 

 posed, have any claim to the regard of mankind, the 

 name of Nathaniel Bloomfield Vi^ill not be without its 

 high and appropriate honours. 



Rousseau very truly observes, that with whatever talent 

 a man may be born, the art of writing is not easily ob- 

 tained. If this be applicable to men enjoying every ad- 

 vantage of scholastic initiation, how much more forcibly 

 must it apply to the offspring of a poor village tailor, 

 untaught, and destitute both of the means and' the time 

 necessary for the cultivation of the mind ! If the art of 

 writing be of difficult attainment to those who make it 

 the study of their lives, what must it be to him, who,* 

 perhaps for the first forty years of his life, never enter- 

 tained a thought that anything he could write would be 

 deemed worthy of the attention of the public ! — whose 

 only time for rumination was such as a sedentary and 

 sickly employment would allow; on the tailor's board, 

 surrounded with men, perhaps, of depraved and rude 

 habits, and impure conversation. 



And yet, that Mr N. Bloomfield's poems display acute- 

 ness of remark and delicacy of sentiment, combined with 

 much strength and considerable selection of diction, few 

 win deny. The " Psean to Gunpowder" would alone 

 prove both his power of language, and the fertility of his 

 imagination ; and the following extract presents him to 

 us in the still higher character of a bold and yivid painter. 

 Describing the field after a battle, he says — 



*' Now here and there, about the horrid field, 

 Striding across the dying and the dead, 

 Stalks up a man, by strength superior, 

 Or skill and prowess in the arduous fight, 

 Preserved alive : fainting he looks around ; 

 Fearing pursuit — not caring to pursue. 

 The supplicating voice of bitterest moans, 

 Contortions of excruciating pain, 

 The shriek of torture, and the groan of death, 

 Surround him ; and as Night her mantle spreads. 

 To veil the horrors of the mourning field, 

 "With cautious step shaping his devious way, 



