Mere descriptions of rural scenes do not demand the higher qualities of the poet--imagination and passion. The lower kind of inspiration is, in fact, often better suited to such themes and shows nature by the common light of day, as it were, instead of revealing it as by a succession of lightning flashes. Even among those who confine themselves to this lower plane, Bloomfield is not great: his small flame is constantly sinking and flickering out. But at intervals it burns up again and redeems the work from being wholly commonplace and trivial. He is, in fact, no better than many another small poet who has been devoured by Time since his day, and whose work no person would now attempt to bring back. It is probable, too, that many of these lesser singers whose fame was brief would in their day have deeply resented being placed on a level with the Suffolk peasant-poet. In spite of all this, and of the impossibility of saving most of the verse which is only passably good from oblivion, I still think the Farmer's Boy worth preserving for more reasons than one, but chiefly because it is the only work of its kind. There is no lack of rural poetry--the Seasons to begin with and much Thomsonian poetry besides, treating of nature in a general way; then we have innumerable detached descriptions of actual scenes, such as we find scattered throughout Cowper's Task, and numberless other works. Besides all this there are the countless shorter poems, each conveying an impression of some particular scene or aspect of nature; the poet of the open air, like the landscape painter, is ever on the look out for picturesque "bits" and atmospheric effects as a subject. In Bloomfield we get something altogether different--a simple, consistent, and fairly complete account of the country people's toilsome life in a remote agricultural district in England--a small rustic village set amid green and arable fields, woods and common lands. We have it from the inside by one who had part in it, born and bred to the humble life he described; and, finally, it is not given as a full day-to-day record--photographed as we may say--with all the minute unessential details and repetitions, but as it appeared when looked back upon from a distance, reliving it in memory, the sights and sounds and events which had impressed the boy's mind standing vividly out. Of this lowly poem it may be truly said that it is "emotion recollected in tranquillity," to use the phrase invented by Wordsworth when he attempted a definition of poetry generally and signally failed, as Coleridge demonstrated.