I am! yet what I am who cares, or knows? was never hungry afterwards. I remember friends or patrons ever visited him, and all passing through Buckden, and going a length his family kept aloof from him; the world of road afterwards; but I do not recollect the left him, and he, long before he left it, was name of any place until I came to Stilton, where I was completely footsore, bleeding, and quite prepared to leave the world; but this broken down. When I had got about half-way neglect preyed upon him; in one of these through the town, a gravel causeway invited me moods he gave utterance to the following to rest myself; so I laid down and nearly went truly sublime burst of feeling — to sleep. A young woman, as I guessed by the voice, came out of a house, and said, 'Poor creature; and another more elderly said, 'Oh, he shams.' But when I got up the latter said, 'Oh no, he don't,' as I hobbled along very lame. I heard the voices, but never looked back to see where they came from. When I got near the inn at the end of the gravel walk, I met two young women, and asked one of them whether the road branching to the right by the inn did not lead to Peterborough. She said, 'Yes.' As soon as ever I was on it, I felt myself on the way home, and went on rather more cheerful, though I was forced to rest oftener than usual." I Shadows of life, whose very soul is lost. Where there is neither sense of life, nor joys, And all that's dear. Even those I loved the Are strange-nay, they are stranger than the rest. I long for scenes where man has never trod, For scenes where woman never smiled or wept ; There to abide with my creator, God, And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept But lucid intervals often flash through the ful: : BEAUTY AND VIRTUE. The extracts are long, but were there ever such autobiographic sketches penned before? But he was not allowed to remain at home long, he was soon consigned to the asylum again; yet his malady was very harmless, and the medical men, Fenwick Skrimshaw and William Page, of Market Deeping- mark their names who signed the certificate consigning him for life to the county madhouse, absolutely gave as the reason for doing so, the fact that for years he had written poetry-yes, literally, in their language, "After years addicted to poetical prosings." It is well that Tennyson, and Browning, and Bailey are not poor and untended men; at any rate it is well that they are not likely to come beneath the eyes of Skrimshaw and Page; to those pleasant men we are sure all their words would only seem prosings. Yes, it was, whatever was the state of Clare's mind, it was his chief mark of delirium that he wrote verses. he was torn away to the madhouse; he struggled hard, he wept sore, he declared he would rather die than go, but he was taken away, and it seems he was treated with every kindness and consideration; gladly we record it, most gladly and gratefully we record that, although only eleven shillings a-week was paid for his support, and this by the late Earl Fitzwilliam, a sum which did not entitle him to much better treatment then a pauper, he was placed in the best The following also, entitled ward, and among the private patients. The heads of the asylum did honour to themselves as well as him, and recognized the poet in the pauper. For twenty-two years he sojourned there; during all those years it is said not one of all his great or little So Love finds them angels, ready made, So beautiful and blooming; Time, like a robber, every year Takes all the fame he gives; SIGHING FOR RETIREMENT. I knew the sparrow could not sing, I found her nest of oaken leaves, I found them on a white-thorn root, I love the Poet of the woods, That, with the cuckoo, brings the love Man goes by art to foreign lands, GOD of a thousand worlds on high ! Proud men may lord and dare; POWER tells them that the meanest things Are worthy of His care. On the 20th of May, 1864, poor Clare closed his eyes forever. His last words were, "I want to go home." Few of our readers will know much of John Clare; with us he has long been a favourite; those who read this volume of his life by Mr. Martin will very likely enquire, Who was he? was he a poet? what did he do? what are his claims? and we think Mr. Martin would have done wisely had he gathered into this volume some of the chief of his pieces, the happiest illustrations of his genius and his style; for few will take worth upon trust, and there is nothing in the volume to inform the reader adequately whether the poor unfortunate lime-burner and peasant was all that some of the earlier criticisms upon his writings implied. John Clare then was, in a very eminent sense, a rural poet; all his verses have the charm of rustic life, but they are description, informed by reflection. Bloomfield is rustic, and only rustic. The sweet woodbine and honeysuckle grace of his verse shows little of gardener's training; it is simply and only village-like and wild. Clare could not tell a tale so delightfully as Bloomfield; we have nothing that can be put in competition with the Fair Day or the Fakenham Ghost, but on the other hand, reflection, which is the glory of the poet, was quite wanting to Bloomfield; while to Clare every rustic image, every insect, and all bird, and flower relieved and lightened up | Nor turn this spot of happiness to thrall ; an infinite background of mystery; as really For melody seems hid in every flower, as to Wordsworth himself, the aureola of That blossoms near thy home. These harebells the mystical glorified everything and rested everywhere; hence, often, over his verses And gaping cuckoo-flower, with spotted leaves, Seem bowing with the beautiful in song; there is the brood and hush of a deep solem- Seems blushing of the singing it has heard. nity in feeling and rhythm. He was a poor, How curious is the nest; no other bird illiterate man, but he had very much of Uses such loose materials, or weaves Wordsworth's way of looking at things, and Its dwelling in such spots: dead oaken leaves his manner of speaking about them; he Are placed without, and velvet moss within, had no humour, no freakishness of speech; And little scraps of grass, and, scant and like the great high priest of Nature, whose spare, name we have mentioned, he had no disposition towards mirth or trifling with the subjects he treated; he looked at a flower or an insect intensely-it became in itself transcendently glorious and beautiful to him. We are neither praising nor blaming this attribute, we are only saying it was simply SO. We have called him long since the laureate of birds' nests-nests often seen, he is careful to remind you, never touched. We have the nest of the pettichap close to the rutgalled wagon road, so snugly contrived, although with not a clump of grass to keep it warm, or shielding thistle spreading its spears abroad : * a little hole, shell. What a sweet individuality of description in the Nest of the Nightingale, a lengthy and most charming poem, but we can only quote a portion : Aye, as I live! her secret nest is here, about For hours in vain. There! put that bramble Nay, trample on its branches and get near. And raised a plaintive note of danger nigh, win. What scarcely seem materials, down and hair; here, Where Solitude's disciples spend their lives wrong, As the old woodland's legacy of song. But all the birds finds their eggs and nests beautified in this rich mystical halo of verses. This is the aspect of Clare's writing we are desirous of noticing. We very confidently say that, excepting among the very highest masters of song, such as Wordsworth, and Tennyson, and Cowper, there it is intensely reflective. Before him were is no rural poetry like it; it is not pastoral, perpetually present the eternal youth and the eternity of Nature he writes in the etrrnal mystery of Nature; indeed, upon following remarkable glints of mystical rhythm. What a half-instinctive, half-observing eye looks at the things enumerated in the following perception of the odd number, five, among natural things: Leaves, from eternity, are simple things clings And still the child, hid in the womb of Time, Shall be forgotten, like a churchyard stone, -- And run to pluck it, in the self-same state, Makes dear to me, I wander out and rhyme; The briony, in the hedge, that now adorns white; Count which I will, all make the number right. eternity. We think these passages will abundantly vindicate our expression of the deeply reflective and sweetly subtle character of Clare's poetry. Sixteen years since we than which we really can find no words of expressed ourselves in a criticism upon it, our own transcendent in expression now, and will take the freedom to ask our readers to read it. "Clare writes as Gilbert White would have written had he been a poet. He threads his way through all Nature's scenery with a quiet meditation and reflection; and frequently those reflections, bear the stamp of profound beauty. Clare's if not the result of profound thought, yet life is in the country. There are those who study the country, and read the volume of the town by its side; there are those who bring to the study of the country extensive readings and learning; there are those who make each scene of country life only the key to their own imaginations, and move, indeed, very far from the scene of their original thought; but Clare takes the country literally as it is; he brings to it no learning, no historical suggestions; he seeks in the country none of the monuments of haughty human grandeur; he unfolds no political philosophy; he seeks no high idealization; he takes the lesson lying on the surface, and frequently it is so simple and natural, that it affects us to tears. The fields of Nature are not so much a study to which he retires, or an observatory which he reads, and, as he reads, turns down the he mounts; they are rather a book which after this, what we do actually find, an expage. We should be prepared to expect, treme homeliness of style and thought; we I mean homeliness in its highest and best sense, not lowness, nor vulgarity - the very reverse of all these. Clare walks through the whole world around him with the im pression, that he cannot go where universal love smiles not around.' His whole soul is a fountain of love and sensibility, and it wells forth in loving verse for all and to all creatures. The lessons of his verses may be described as coming, rather than being sought; for they grow up before him; he does not dig for them, and therefore his poems are rather fancies and feelings than imaginations. He throws his whole mind, with all his sensitiveness, into the country; yet not so much does he hang over its human life as the life of Nature, the love and the loveliness of this beautiful world. Traditional tales he does not narrate. A bird's nest has far more attraction to his eyes than the old manor-house or the castle. The life of the cottage, too, is a holy life for him; his home is there, and every season brings, day by day, its treasures of enjoyment and of peace to him. In a new and noble sense all his poems are pastorals; he sings of rural loves and trystings, hopes and joys. He never, indeed, loses himself, as many have done, in vague generalities, for he has been a keen observer of the ways of Nature; he knows her face in all its moods, and to him that face is always cheerful. Other poets go out into the walks of Nature to spend a holiday; they love her, but to see her is an occasional pleasure; but to Clare it is an every-day existence. He has no holiday with Nature; he walks with her as friend with friend. Other poets select a river, or a mountain, and individualize it; but to Clare all are but parts of the same lovely Home, and as every part of the home is endeared the chair, the shelf, the lattice, the wreathing flower, the fire-place, the table-so is every object in Nature a beloved object, because the whole is beloved. Other poets entertain, as they enter the avenues of Nature, a most solemn awe and dread: we have said that Clare never forgets himself in low coarseness, so neither does he ever shrink or shiver beneath the dread of an overawing presence; he walks with Nature as an angel walks with goodness-naturally, cheerfully, fraternally. 66 Fancy, Feeling, and Reflection, these are the characteristics of the verses before us. Most rural poets have indulged merely in the Feeling, but the Feeling has not been sufficiently sensitive or profound for Reflection, and the mind has not been active enough for Fancy. That is rich and aerial humour of our poet, in which he enters into the life of an insect. Insects, which to many are, have been, and will be, simply an annoyance, are to him fairies, with coloured hoods and burnished wings, disguised in a sort of splendid masquerade, rocked to sleep in the smooth velvet of the pale hedge-rose, or slumbering like princes in the heath-bell's purple hood, secure from rain, from dropping dews, in silken beds and painted hall; a jolly and a royal life this seems, this band of playfellows mocking the sunshine on their glittering wings, or drinking golden wine and metheglin from the cup of the honeyed flower. It is in a deeper mood that the Ploughman reflects upon the eternity of Nature; round the simplest things in Nature, to his eye, there is entwined a spirit sublime and lasting: the daisy, trampled under foot, strikes its root into the earth, and in the distant cen 6 turies of time the child will clap its tiny hands with pleasure, and cry, A daisy!' its golden bosom, frilled with snow, will be the same, as bright as when Eve stooped to pluck it in Eden. Cowslips of golden bloom will come and go as fresh two thousand years hence as now; brooks, bees, birds, from age to age, these will sing on when all the ambitious things of earth shall have passed away; and not only the fact continues, but the fact in the same form; for Clare, like Audubon, is not content to be merely sentimental: he fixes his eye on the properties and ever-recurring mysteries of Nature; all Nature's ways are mysteries." " But how while we read such verses and regard them not merely as melodious pieces of verse-writing, but as the visions of a being with an eye tremblingly alive and visionary in every nerve and pore; an eye gifted with a second sight so extraordinary; a feeling sensitive, not merely to every rude blow, but even to the brush of every breezy gossamer how our affectionateness and tender appreciation deepen for one who could not look upon the meanest thing without being brought into a sense of feeling relationship and affinity with it. Sometimes, as we have said, such tenderness found itself excited by an insect; and his little piece on Insects almost leads one to think that he could write with perfect freshness, and freedom, and delightful experimental ease, an Insect's Autobiography. These tiny loiterers on the barley's beard, shine wine. Of noon, whose suns may bring them golden wings, |