20. M.rs CHARLOTTE SMITH.

See a character of this sweet poetess in Censura Literaria, written by the Editor of this Reprint.

21. M.TS ELIZABETH CARTER.

This Lady had compleated her 86.th year at her death in Jan. 1806. She was a native of Deal in Kent, where her father, the Rev. Dr. Nicholas Carter, was the Minister, Her nephew, the Rev. Montagu Pennington, has published her Life, and her Letters. She commenced to write poetry about her 15.th year; at which age some of her earliest pieces were inserted in the Gentleman's Magazine. Many epistolary writers have had a pen more airy and more witty than M.rs Carter: but none so solid; and scarce any so eloquent. She was a deep scholar; a profound moralist; and a very original thinker. She had a strong, though not quick, fancy but she seems to have had very little imagination. Her feelings were the result rather of meditation and reflexion than of lively and violent impression, She was always philosophical; never rapturous; and suffered nothing to pass her pen or her lips, which had not the approbation of her reason and her judgment. Always considerate, her opinions may be almost universally taken

as the cool dictates of wisdom and though they are by no means fitted to the eccentricities and the momentary splendors, which are the taste of the present day, will remain standards both of sound sense and elegant compositition which will be consulted and reperused, ages and ages after all meteors shall haved passed away and have been forgotten.

22. REV. WILLIAM BAGSHAW STEVENS

Was master of Repton School Derbyshire, and died 1800 at a middle age. He published at Oxford, while an Undergraduate of Magdalen College, Indian Odes &c. and afterward, Retirement, &c. 1782. He was a friend of Mundy, Miss Seward, &c.

23. REV JOHN WALTERS.

Was, I think, Master of Ruthen school, Denbighshire, and died young about 1797. He gained a prize at Oxford for English Verses: and published in 1782 a small volume, which contained some elegant Inscriptions, after the Greek model.

24. REV..

HOYLAND.

Ilis poems were one of the Strawberry Hill publications : and were posthumous.

25. MISS TREFUSIS.

Miss Trefusis was sister to the late Lord Clinton. She is said to have been possessed of considerable genius.

26. W. WOTY

Was a bon-vivant who lived among the Leicestershire and Derbyshire nobles and gentry. He was an intimate friend of Francis Fawkes; and his coadjutor in editing the Poetical Calendar.

Her Letters have been published by her nephew. She was of the ancient family of Mulso.

rs

28. M. CATHERINE TALBOT

Was neice to Lord Chancellor Talbot. She died 1770. See her Letters to M.rs Carter, and her volume of Essays and Poems.

29. D. JOHN AIKIN.

A Life of him has been published by his daughter, Lucy Aikin.

NOTE XII.

30. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD.

The following is copied from an article which I communicated to the Gentleman's Magazine.

27 Oct. 1823.

- but a

ROBERT BLOOMFIELD was a genuine poet in the class to which he belonged: not perhaps a very high class; genuine poet in any class is much more rare than is commonly supposed. A primary trait is exhibited by productions which consist in ideas and sentiments rather than in words. Nine tenths of modern poetry are a mere trick of language three fourths of the other tenth consist of monstrous imagination, outrageous fiction, or extravagant sentiment, or thought. A false ambition proves an emptiness of genius. Bloomfield wrote because his mind and his heart were full,

He had a gentle spirit: his taste and his pleasures were simple and humble he turned inward, and was content with the feelings which nature inspired in him; and never seemed desirous or tempted to go abroad for borrowed thoughts and strange decorations. His writings therefore have no unsuitable patches; but are all of a piece.

In the simple style of composition which belonged to Bloomfield, poverty or flatness of thought cannot be disguised but to a nice or solid taste disguise only aggravates these defects. We bear therefore with faults, where there is no pretension, for the sake of the touching passages which they so frequently introduce, and which more than redeem them.

We are justly enraptured with a noble train of Fiction, when we have the good fortune to meet with it but experience proves that this magnificent faculty exhibits itself but infrequently in the course of centuries; and great pleasure may be derived from powers and exertions of a far inferior kind.

There is in the visible world, in the actual forms of things, in the external shapes of creation, beauty and even grandeur, which may delight the fancy, and move the heart. To paint these images is not to fulfill all the sublime purposes which answer Shakespeare's character of a grand poet when he talks of « giving to airy nothing a local habitation and a name : » but still it is to convey a « homefelt delight, » a « sober certainty of bliss.»

There is a calm domestic enjoyment, a gentle, unstimulating, unexhausting emotion in Bloomfield's poems, which, when the duties of life call upon us to repress visionary moods, and keep ourselves in an humour fitted for the