1804. 
To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 
SIR, 
HB AVING frequently obferved that 
your entertaining and initructive 
mifcellany, the nurfe of genius and the 
encourager of negleéted merit, occafion- 
aily offers to public notice works likely 
to become creditable to their author, I 
am induced to fend you an account of a 
little volume of poems, lately pubMthed, 
by a felf-taught, untutored fon of ge- 
nius, I make no doubt, Mr. Editor, 
you will think with me, that this little 
volume poflefies confiderable merit, from 
the extracts [now fend you, by which 
you will be induced to give this commu- 
nication an early infertion in your Maga- 
zine. The volume is entitled Village- 
Scenes: the Progrefs of Agriculture, and 
other Poems, by T. Batchelor. The au- 
thor is a young man, the fon of a farmer 
inthis neighbourhood, who, like a fecond 
Bloomfield, was born a rural poet, and 
who, under every difadvantage, has 
given to the world a fpecimen of very 
corliderable poetic powers. The poems 
have been written without any affiftance of 
the learned, and without any patronage of 
the great; not inthe foft fhades of retire- 
ment, nor under the fhelter of academic 
bowers, but amidft inconvenience and dif- 
‘tra€tion, in ob{curity and negleét, and 
without a Capel Loft to ufher them into 
the world. The firft and principal of the 
poems, Village-Scenes, opens with an in- 
vocation to memory, with a defcription 
of the feelings awakened by recollection, 
with the happinefs of childhood, and an 
apoftrophe to folitude.—The deicription 
ot therifing fun: 
Refra&ted rays of Phebus’ dawning light 
Divergent fhooting, chafe the fhades of night, 
Prifmatic colours, pencil’d by the morn, 
With feeble luitre orient clouds adorn ; 
At intervals, through tides of zther, float 
Time’s folemn toll, and chanticleer’s fhrill 
note 5 
The bird of night fhrieks on the mould’ring 
fane, 
And watch-dogs bay refponfive to her ftrain : 
the foothing influence of fleep on’ po- 
verty: 
Yet Sleep her foft oblivious fway maintains, 
And binds the village in her pieafing chains ; 
Sooth’d hy her hand, beneath a clay-cold 
thed, 
Pale Want repofes ona cheerful bed, 
Sicknefs and Care confefs the balmy hour, 
Nor envy pines at beauty, wealth, or pow’r: 
but unable to calm the perturbed fpirit of 
Account of the Poems of T. Batchebr. Say 
the difappointed lover and betrayed fair 
one: 
But griefs there are that baniff all delight, 
The charms of day, the calm repofe of night, 
Wound the fad breaft, and break the bands of 
fleep, 
To ope the eyes that only.wake to weep: 
E’en now perhaps fome low-defponding fwain — 
Heaves the deep figh, o’ercome by cold dil- 
dain ; 
With ftreaming eyes, fome fad difhonour’d 
fair ; 
Mourns o’er the babe that owns no father’s 
care ; 
breathe the true fpirit of poetic beauty. 
The village maid at the tomb of her 7 
lover is very affeétingly and poetically de- 
{cribed. ‘The contending emotions of 
pity and love, when fhe paffes his grave 
on going to church, are penciled with 
the hand of a matter, ina fimple, unaf- 
fected, and poetical train. To dojuftice 
to the author and the poetry, they ought 
to be quoted, were I not fearful of occu- 
pying toomany of your pages, always so 
well filled with interefting matter; but the 
apofirophe to Genius, and the neglect it 
often meets with when untutored by edu- 
cation, or uncherifhed by patronage, de- 
ferves, Mr. Ediior, to be admitted into 
your pages: 
Superior worth alone can wreaths beftow, 
That grace a monarch’s or a peafaat’s brow 3 
And Genius blooms peculiar to no foil, 
The growth of nature, not the meed of toil. 
Yet oft her infant buds negletted lie, 
And feel the rudencfs of a wint’ry fky: 
Unfelt the gleams of Fortune’s funny hour, 
Unpropp’d by Learning’s all fuftaining pow’r, 
Obicur’d by Gothic ¢arknefs, and decry’d 
Lv Foily, biafted, crufh’d by letter’d Pride, 
Its languid beauties fee] a {wift decay, : 
And immature it finks from life away. 
The methed by which the peafant tells 
the hour of the day ; the fimile which com. 
pares the oak, that fhelters and proteéts 
the cattle under it, during a ftorm, to the 
protestor of the needy and the diltrefled, 
are well-wrought pieces of poetry : 
Secure they lie—fecure from ew ry blow, 
Save that alone which lays their guardian low. 
The detcviption of the manfion in ruins, 
once the feat of magnificence and gran- 
deur, -affords a decided proof of the pow- 
ers of this rural poet—the mouldering tur- 
rets, the decayed half-broken columns ; 
the owl and raven raiing their difmal 
notes from the time-flaws of the high- 
raifed dome— 
Thence the night-raven daunts with boding 
cry, 
And ghofts ideal meet the timid eye. 
The 
