[Joseph Blacket (1786-1810), said by Southey ('Letters,' i. 172) to possess "force and rapidity," and to be endowed with "more powers than Robert Bloomfield, and an intellect of higher pitch," was the son of a labourer, and by trade a cobbler. He was brought into notice by S. J. Pratt (who published Blacket's 'Remains' in 1811), and was befriended by the Milbanke family. Miss Milbanke, afterwards Lady Byron, wrote (Sept. 2, 1809), "Seaham is at present the residence of a poet, by name Joseph Blacket, one of the Burns-like and Dermody kind, whose genius is his sole possession. I was yesterday in his company for the first time, and was much pleased with his manners and conversation. He is extremely diffident, his deportment is mild, and his countenance animated melancholy and of a satirical turn. His poems certainly display a superior genius and an enlarged mind...." Blacket died on the Seaham estate in Sept., 1810, at the age of twenty-three. (See Byron's letter to Dallas, June 28, 1811; his 'Epitaph for Joseph Blackett;' and 'Hints from Horace,' l. 734.)]] [Footnote 122: Capel Lofft, Esq., the Mæcenas of shoemakers, and Preface-writer-General to distressed versemen; a kind of gratis Accoucheur to those who wish to be delivered of rhyme, but do not know how to bring it forth. [Capel Lofft (1751-1824), jurist, poet, critic, and horticulturist, honoured himself by his kindly patronage of Robert Bloomfield (1766-1823), who was born at Honington, near Lofft's estate of Throston, Suffolk. Robert Bloomfield was brought up by his elder brothers-- Nathaniel a tailor, and George a shoemaker. It was in the latter's workshop that he composed 'The Farmer's Boy,' which was published (1798) with the help of Lofft. He also wrote 'Rural Tales' (1802), 'Good Tidings; or News from the Farm '(1804), 'The Banks of the Wye' (1811), etc. (See 'Hints from Horace,' line 734, notes 1 and 2.)]] [Footnote 123: See Nathaniel Bloomfield's ode, elegy, or whatever he or any one else chooses to call it, on the enclosures of "Honington Green." [Nathaniel Bloomfield, as a matter of fact, called it a ballad.--'Poems' (1803).]] [Footnote 124: Vide 'Recollections of a Weaver in the Moorlands of Staffordshire'. [The exact title is 'The Moorland Bard; or Poetical Recollections of a Weaver', etc. 2 vols., 1807. The author was T. Bakewell, who also wrote 'A Domestic Guide to Insanity', 1805.]] [Footnote 125: It would be superfluous to recall to the mind of the reader the authors of 'The Pleasures of Memory' and 'The Pleasures of Hope', the most beautiful didactic poems in our language, if we except Pope's 'Essay on Man': but so many poetasters have started up, that even the names of Campbell and Rogers are become strange.--[Beneath this note Byron scribbled, in 1816,-- "Pretty Miss Jaqueline Had a nose aquiline, And would assert rude Things of Miss Gertrude, While Mr. Marmion Led a great army on, Making Kehama look Like a fierce Mameluke."