10. Robert Bloomfield to George
Bloomfield, 16 September 1798*
London, Sunday, Sep 16. 1798
Dear George,
I gave you a hint long ago that I was making rhymes. I now send
the poem as a present to my
Mother. It coming through your hands you will be at liberty to detain
it as long as you please, and I have no doubt but some parts of it will please
you. I would wish you to observe well the following remarks, and I wish you to
be candid, if it should ever draw any remarks from you.
When I began it, I thought to myself that I could compleat it in
a twelvemonth, allowing myself three months for each quarter; but I soon found
that I could not, and indeed I made it longer than I at first intended.* Nine
tenths of it was put together as I sat at work, where there are usually six of
us; no one in the house have any knowledge of what I have employed my thoughts
about when I did not talk.
I chose to do it in rhime for this reason; because I found
allways that when I put two or three lines together in blank verse, or something
that sounded like it, it was a great chance if it stood right when it came to be
wrote down, for blank verse have ten syllables in a line, and this particular I
could not adjust, nor bear in memory as I could rhimes. Winter, and half of
Autumn were done long before I could find leisure to write them. In the Harvest
Home you will find the essence of letters you have wrote formerly to London.
When I had nearly done it, it came strongly into my mind that
very silly things are somtimes printed, but by what means I know not. To try and
get at this knowledge I resolved to make some efforts of the sort; and what
encouraged me to go through with it was, that if I got laugh'd at, no one that I
cared for could know it, unless I myself told them. I somtimes thought of
venturing it into the house of some person above a Bookseller; but I never could
find impudence enough to do it. So I carried it, accompanied with the following
letter, to your magazine man. He kept it eight or ten days, and then sent a
sober-looking, book-faced man back with it, sending therewith the little note
which follows the letter. [1]
* The parts of the poem first composed, before any thought was entertained of
going through with the Seasons, were the morning scene in Spring, beginning
'This task had Giles,' and the description of the lambs at
play. And if it be lawful for an author to tell his opinion, they have never
lost an inch of ground from that day to this. —
