among them Paradise Lost and The Seasons: these he lent to Robert, who was particularly delighted with The Seasons, and studied it with peculiar attention. The vivid imagery and glowing diction of Thomson, were in strict accordance with his own conceptions of the charms of nature; but when at a subsequent period here-considered the descriptions of the Scottish bard, he felt a firm conviction that the subject had not been exhausted; and that "the rural occupation and business of the fields, the dairy, and the farm-yard," would still afford a sufficient range for an original and independent poem.
Soon afterwards a dispute between the masters and the journeymen shoemakers, respecting the right of giving employment to those who had not served a regular apprenticeship, occasioned a temporary suspension in the vocations of young Bloomfield; and till the disputes were settled, his old master and uncle, Mr. Austin, again invited him to his house at Sapiston. The invitation was accepted; and in the very fields where his infant mind first opened to the beauties of the country, and imbibed its fondness for rural simplicity and rural innocence, he experienced a renovation of his original feelings, and 'became fitted to be the writer of The Farmer's Boy.'
