[Illustration]

WILD FLOWERS

OR,

PASTORAL AND LOCAL POETRY.

By ROBERT BLOOMFIELD
Author of "The Farmer's Boy" and "Rural Tales".

LONDON:
Printed for Vernor, Hood, and Sharpe, Poultry;
and Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, Paternoster-Row.

1806.

WRIGHT, Printer, No. 32, St. John's Square, Clerkenwall.




PREFACE

A man of the first eminence, in whose day (fortunately perhaps for me) I
was not destined to appear before the public, or to abide the Herculean
crab-tree of his criticism, Dr. Johnson, has said, in his preface to
Shakspeare, that--"Nothing can please many, and please long, but just
representations of general nature." My representations of nature, whatever
may be said of their _justness_, are not _general_, unless we admit, what