The family of Bloomfield consists of his wife, three daughters, and a son: to the latter, who is unfortunately afflicted with lameness, his father has dedicated his Wild Flowers. His wife's father is also resident in his house, and it will not be thought undeserving of notice, by those for whom the "simple annals of the poor" have interest, that the "Old Oak Table" upon whose "back" The Farmer's Boy was written, was a gift from this relation towards housekeeping; and to use the words of Bloomfield himself, composed of his
Worldly wealth, the parent stock.
From the little that can at present be ascertained of the family of Bloomfield, it appears that the great-grandfather of the Poet, both on the male and on the female side, is the most distant ancestor whose relationship can regularly be traced; and it is singular that both these relations were tailors, and that they were both placed out to that trade by ladies, whose names are now unknown. Isaac Bloomfield, his great-grandfather by the male line, was apprenticed at Framlingham, in Suffolk; but in the latter part of his life he was Churchwarden during twenty-seven years, of the parish of Ousden, in the same county. He lived to the age of eighty-
