Note 144 — POETS OF THE COBBLER’S STALL.

It may be thought by some readers that Bloomfield’s brothers, George and Nathaniel, ought to have a place in our list of illustrious shoemakers. George, in his correspondence with Mr. Capel Lofft, Robert’s patron, showed himself a man of good sense and a fair writer. See preface to Bloomfield’s Poems. But Nathaniel, the author of a little volume of poems, edited by Capel Lofft, 1803, entitled, “An Essay on War,“ in blank verse, and ”Honington Green, a Ballad,” was not a shoemaker. He was a tailor, though not a few writers have made Byron’s mistake of classing him with “ye tuneful cobblers.”