SOURCE: Review of Rural Tales and Poems, by Robert Bloomfield. Critical Review 35 (May 1802): 67-75.

In the following excerpt, the critic asserts that Bloomfield's second work, Rural Tales, equals the brilliance of his well-known The Farmer's Boy.

This volume cannot be better introduced than by the author's preface—a manly and modest performance, highly honourable to his feelings and his abilities.

‘The poems here offered to the public were chiefly written during the interval between the concluding, and the publishing of The Farmer's Boy, an interval of nearly two years. The pieces of a later date are, “The Widow to her Hour-Glass,” “The Fakenham Ghost,” “Walter and Jane,” & c. At the time of publishing The Farmer's Boy, circumstances occurred which rendered it necessary to submit these poems to the perusal of my friends: under whose approbation I now give them, with some confidence as to their moral merit, to...