N° LXIII.

Lines by Bloomfield on his Mother's Spindle.

EVERY one is acquainted with the pastoral poetry of Bloomfield. It is not so generally known, with what wonderful power and pathos he can write in blank verse.

"Robert Bloomfield to his Mother's Spindle.

To A SPINDLE."

"Relic! I will not bow to thee nor worship!
Yet treasure as thou art, remembrancer
Of sunny days, that ever haunt my dreams,

"The portrait of my mother," says Bloomfield," was taken on her last visit to London, in the summer of 1804. During the period of evident decline in her strength and faculties, she conceived, in place of that patient resignation, which she had before felt, an ungovernable dread of ultimate want, and observed to a relative with peculiar emphasis, 'that to meet WINTER, OLD AGE, and POVERTY, was like meeting three great giants.' To the last hour of her life she was an excellent spinner; and latterly, the peculiar kind of wool which she spun was bought exclusively for her, as being the only one in the village, who exercised their industry on so fine a sort. During the tearful paroxysms of her last depression she spun with the

When thy brown fellows as a task I twirl'd,
And sung my ditties ere the farm receiv'd
My vagrant foot, and with its liberty

And all its cheerful buds and opening flowers
Had taught my heart to wander.

Relic of affection, come;

Thou shalt a moral teach to me and mine.

The hand that wound thee smooth is cold, and spins No more. Debility press'd hard around

The seat of life, and terrors fill'd her brain;

Nor causeless terrors: Giants grim and bold,
Three mighty ones she fear'd to meet; they came-
WINTER, OLD AGE, and POVERTY, all came:
The last had dropp'd his club, yet fancy made
Him formidable; and when Death beheld
Her tribulation, he fulfill'd his task,

And to her trembling hand and heart at once,

Cried, spin no more;' thou then wert left half fill'd

With this soft downy fleece, such as she wound

Through all her days! She who could spin so well! Half fill'd wert thou, half finish'd when she died. Half finish'd! 'tis the motto of the world!

utmost violence, and with vehemence exclaimed ' I must spin.' A paralytic affection struck her whole side while at work, and obliged her to quit her spindle when only half filled, and she died within a fortnight afterwards! I have that spindle now. She was buried on the last day of the year 1804. She returned from her visit to London on Friday the 29th of June, just to a day twenty-three years after she brought me to London, which was also on a Friday, in the year 1781." Bloomfield.

We spin vain threads, and dream, and strive, and die,
With sillier things than Spindles in our hands.
Then feeling, as I do, resistlessly,.

The bias set upon my soul for verse,

Oh! should old age still find my brain at work,
And Death, o'er some poor fragment striding, cry,
'Hold! spin no more!' Grant Heaven, that purity
Of thought and texture may assimilate
That fragment unto thee, in usefulness,
In strength, and snowy innocence. Then shall
The village school-mistress shine brighter, through
The exit of her boy; and both shall live,
And Virtue triumph too, and Virtue's tears,
Like Heav'n's pure blessings, fall upon her grave."x

There is no reader of English poetry, who does not recollect Cowper's exquisite lines on his Mother's Picture. This fragment of Bloomfield forms a noble companion to them. It strikes me to be written in a loftier tone, and still more excellent manner than any of his other productions. Let him give new delight and astonishment to the world by a moral and descriptive poem in blank verse!

The whole of this is taken from the interesting memoir by BRAYLEY, which accompanies Storer and Greig's Illustrations of Bloomfield, 1806. 4to.

Jan. 26, 1809

N° LXIV.

Memoir of William Habington.

THE following has been recovered by my Mr. NICHOLS, from a mass of papers.

friend

Oct. 11, 1797.

William Habington, a poet and historian of the last century, seems to have received less notice from posterity than he deserves. The principal particulars of his life and family are to be found in Wood's Athenæ, II. 110; and Nash's Worcestershire, I. 588. I shall select such as appear necessary to the illustration of his character and writings.

Richard Habington of Brockhampton, in Herefordshire, of a very ancient family, had three sons; Richard, the eldest, of Brockhampton, left a daughter and coheir Eleanor, who marrying Sir Thomas Baskerville left a daughter and heir Eleanor, wife of John Talbot of Longford in Shropshire, father by her of John, 10th Earl of Shrewsbury. John Habington, second son, was Cofferer to Queen Elizabeth. In the fifth of that Queen's reign he bought the manor of Hindlip, in Worcestershire. He was

y Coll, Peer. iii. P. 27.

born 1515; rebuilt the mansion about 1572, and died 1581. By Katherine daughter of John Wykes of Morton-Jeffreys he left issue Thomas Habington his eldest son, born at Thorpe in Surry, 1560; godson of Q. Eliz, who after having studied at Oxford, and travelled to Rheims and Paris, connected himself on his return with those who laboured to release Mary Queen of Scots and contrived many hiding holes in his curious old seat, lately remaining. On the discovery of Babington's conspiracy, 1586, for which his brother Edward, a dangerous and turbulent man, suffered death, (see a minute account of it in Camden's history of this reign, in Kennet, II. 515-518) he fell under strong suspicions, and was committed prisoner to the Tower, where he

2

z See an engraving of it in Nash.

The conspirators were Anthony Babington of DethickHall, in Ashover, Derbyshire (see Pilkington's Derbyshire, II. p. 326); John Savage, a bastard; Gilbert Gifford, of the family of Chillington, Co. Staff.; John Ballard, a priest of Rheims; Edward Windsor, brother to Lord Windsor; Thomas Salisbury, of a good family in Denbighshire; Charles Tilney, the last of an ancient house, and one of the Band of Gentlemen-Pensioners to the Queen; Chidiock Tichburn of Southampton; Edward Abington; Robert Gage of Surry; John Travers, and John Charnock of Lancashire; John Jones, whose father was Yeoman or Keeper of the Wardrobe to Queen Mary; Barnewal, of a noble family in Ireland; and Henry Dun, Clerk in the Office of First Fruits and Tenths; and one Polly a supposed spy on them. Camd. ut supr.