BOOKS.

JOHN C.*

ABOUT a year ago, within two or three days of the death of Clare

the Northamptonshire poet, we drew attention to the unmerited neglect which had so quickly followed the exaggerated praise bestowed upon him, and showed by an extract of exquisite pathos from his last verses, written during the last long period of clouded reason, that the essence of Clare's mind was a true, though not the highest, kind of poetry, and that no portion of his reputation was due to that artificial skill in verse-making which will, during mo- mentary enthusiasms of an uncultivated public taste, not =fre- quently more than supply its place. It is with sincere pleasure that we receive therefore this life of the luckless rural poet, which is full of the deepest and saddest interest. - Mr. Martin has had access to a number of private papers, including apparently, if we may judge by some of the facts stated, more than one minute private diary `- of Clare's, and he has put them together with a quick eye for picturesque effect and a genuine interest in his story. The result is one of the most interesting biographies we have read for many years. Mr. Martin might perhaps have somewhat improved his book had he given us a little more characterizing extract from Clare's poetry, which he scarcely quotes at all till the very end of his life, so that the reader feels an unsatisfied impatience to verify the truth or falsehood of the estimate formed of Clare by the different circles in which he mixed. He would also have done well to revise the somewhat inconsistent estimates given of Clare's London friends at different periods of his life, and which are no doubt copied precisely from Clare's own changing views, but which are given, in almost contradictory forms, as judgments of the biographer. Thus Mrs. Emmerson, who is characterized at page 116 as " a true and faithful friend" of Clare's "whose advice and assistance often proved of the greatest service to him," is satirically spoken of later in the book as a vain and selfish woman, who used Clare for her Own purposes, and threw him off directly he ceased to minister to her vanity. And there are similar changes in the estimates of others of Clare's patrons and friends, which look as if a portion of the papers had been used before the others had come into Mr. Martin's hands. Again, we think Mr. Martin might have added somewhat to the interest of the book if he had indicated the sources of some of his information. Thus the curious account of Clare's visit to General Birch Reynardson, and of the governess who had fallen in love with the poet through one even- ing's study of his first volume of poems, ending with the conflict in his mind whether he should be true to the village girl who was already the mother of one of his children, though not yet his wife, must be taken from a journal of Clare's written at the time, or there could at least be no authority for the lines with which it concludes—" The clouds in the west seemed to glow with an un- earthly light." Authorities for statements of this sort should always be quoted, as a sceptical world always needs assurance that minor effects are not added by the fancy of the author. These slight criticisms are all we have to give, and the only defect of real importance is the deficiency of illustrative early poetry, which the possession, of Clare's poems would of course supply. Still, so far as the poems can be woven in with the life as descriptive of its conditions and outward scenery, we think Mr. Martin would add much to the charm of his book by quoting more freely in his second edition.

Clare's life leaves behind it one almost unrelieved impression of sadness. It is not the hardship or penury of his lot which chiefly affects us, but the childlike inability of his nature to make itself understood by others,—a trait which began with his childhood and only deepened with his age. Mr. Martin's first characteristic story of him presents him as feeling with deeper intensity a longing which the poetic nature in many children (not poets) has experienced very strongly ; but the touching thing with Clare is not his desire to reach the distant horizon where heaven and earth met, but the secrecy with which he cherished it, and his inability afterwards to make it understood even to far from unloving parents ;—

" One day, when still very young, the sight of the distant horizon, more than usually defined in sharp outline, brought on a train of con- templation. A wild yearning to see what was to be seen yonder, where the sky was touching the earth, took hold of him, and he resolved to ex- plore the distant unknown region. He could not sleep a wink all night for eager expectation, and at the dawn of the day the next morning started on his journey, without saying a word to either father or mother. It was a hot day in June, the air close and sultry, with gos- samer mists hanging thick over the stagnant pools and lakes. The little fellow set out without food on his long trip, fearful of being retained by * The Lift of John Clare. By Frederick Mediu. London: Macmillan. his watchful parents. Onward he trotted, mile after mile, towards where the horizon seemed nearest ; and it was a long whilebefore he found that the sky receded the further he went. At last he sank down from sheer exhaustion, hungry and thirsty, and utterly perplexed as to where he should go. Some labourers in the fields, commiserating the forlorn little wanderer, gave him a cruet of bread, and started. him on his home joarney. It was late at night when he returned to Helpston, where ho found his parents in the greatest anxiety, and had to endure a severe punishment for his romantic excursion. Little John Clare did not mind the beating, but a long while after felt sad and sore at heart to have been unable to find the hoped-for country where heaven met earth."

The same characteristic of profound impressibility which Clare shared with all true poets, together with that exceeding helplessness in conveying a true conception of his own feelings and wants to the world, which he exhibits in a far higher degree than most poets,—in great measure no doubt because of his defective educa- tion and the uncultured nature of the companions of his home,— haunted him through life, rendering him in some measure a riddle even to those who were disposed to admire him, and throwing him perpetually into despondency, when he found that neither his feel- ings nor his wants were understood by his friends. Clare was not in his way deficient in a certain strength of character. His pride and hatred of dependence were, for his position in life, very re- markable, and his pertinacity in carrying out anything he had once determined on, even through a whole succession of dis- heartening circumstances, was far more than belongs to most im- pressible poetic natures. But what strikes us so much in reading his life is not his want of practical force, but his great failure in the kind of practical force requisite for communicating with the world. Something or other always paralyzed his tongue at the moment when he should have spoken, and made him speak when he did speak either in a way or under circumstances which caused him to be misunderstood. There was a gulf between Lim and his fellow-creatures which could be passed only from their side, not from his. If they understood him well enough to enter into his mode of feeling and catch his mood, he would pour forth his heart with frankness and simplicity, but no human being ever had less of the power of entering into the feelings of others and catching their mood. When he wrote,-

" I dwell on trifles like a child,

I feel as ill becomes a man ; And yet my thoughts like weedlings wild Grow up and blossom where they can,"

he did but write down the key to his whole life,—that child- like, involuntary, spontaneous character of his feelings and fancies which insulated him from the world, so that he could not pass over to others, though those who had the requisite amount of sympathy— and they were few—could pass over to him. This insulation was the greater bcause Clare's range of poetical feeling and impression was really so limited. His poetry was not onlylimited to poetryof nature, but almost to the impressions of particular scenes and objects which had grown into his heart. There never was a poet who, with so deep and true a feeling for the universal beauty, was so unable to realize it adequately except in objects to which individually he had grown attached by long familiarity. There can be no doubt that his madness was greatly accelerated, if not brought on, by the wrench of a removal of only three miles from the but at Helpston, in which he had lived all his life, to the pretty little cottage at North- borough given him by Earl Fitzwilliam. For weeks after his new cottage was ready he lived in positive terror of the removal, and actually went over to Milton Park to tell the Earl his in- ability to move, but was dissuaded, as usual, at the critical mo- ment by the pressure of friends, and still more probably by his own consciousness of incapacity to make his feelings under- stood. This was how he wrote of the fen country he had left only three miles behind him :— ".I've left my own old Home of Homes,

Green fields, and every pleasant place ; The summer like a stranger comes, I pause—and hardly know her face.

"I miss the heath, its yellow furze, Mole-hills, and rabbit-tracks, that lead Through besom-ling and teasel burrs That spread a wilderness indeed; The woodland oaks, and all below That their white powder'd branches shield, The mossy paths—the very crow Croaks music in my native field.

"I sit me in my corner chair, That seems to feel itself alone ; I hear fond music—here and there From hawthorn-hedge and orchard come. I hear—but all is strange and new : I sat on my old bench last June, The sailing paddock's shrill " pee-lew "

O'er Royce Wood seemed a sweeter time.

"I walk adown the narrow close, The nightingale is singing now ; But like to me she seems at loss For Royce Wood and its shielding bough. I lean upon the window sill, The trees and summer happy seem,-- Green, sunny green they shine—but still My heart goes far away to dream " Of happiness—and thoughts arise, With home-bred pictures many a one— Green lanes that shut out burning skies, And old crook'd stiles to rest upon."

It was this intensity with which Clam's imagination attached itself to familiar forms, and which rendered him unable to generalize even their beauties, that no doubt contributed powerfully to his insanity when he was separated from them. He hung his mind on them as an ivy hangs about the tree which supports it, and when they were no longer with him the shadows of them present to his imagination became more vivid than the realities of things physically present. The "first symptom of his insanity was his belief that he had actually seen the living form of the girl to whom he was passion- ately attached in early life, but who had been many years dead ; and from that moment the shadows of the past began gradually to be more to him than physical presences. This girl, whom he had known only for some six months, he called, throughout the thirty-seven years of his insanity, " his first wife," and his real wife and her family faded into comparative faintness in his memory. The journal of his escape from the lunatic asylum, which Mr. Martin has—with a true judgment of its singular interest not only as a piece of morbid psychology, but also as a madman's poem—given us in exit' nso, is one of the most remarkable passages in the sad history of absolute mental solitude. It reads as if the physical world were retreating to such a distance from Clare that only now and then could he make himself heard across the separating gulf at all. 'rake the follow- ing, for instance, and notice how the " civil people," the people he especially praises, and who evidently must have been kind in manner to the poor wandering poet, are spoken of as " merely hearing him and giving him no answer." The truth evidently was that they answered Mtn kindly, and that he received the impression of their kindness, but that their words and the meaning of them died away as it were in passing the gulf which separated his mind from theirs, and failed to excite any movement in his intelligence, though favourably affecting his heart :- " Next I passed three or four good built houses on a hill, and a public- house on the roadside in the hollow below them. I seemed to pass the

milestones very quick in the morning, but towards night they seemed to be

stretched further asunder. I now got to a village of which I forget the name. The road on the left hand was quite overshadowed by trees, and quite dry. So I sat down half an hour, and made a good many wishes for breakfast. But wishes were no meal ; so I got up as hungry as I sat down. I forget here the names of the villages I passed through, but recollect at late evening going through Potton, in Bedfordshire, where I called in a house to light my pipe. There was a civil old woman and a country wench making lace on a cushion as round as a globe, and a young fellow; all civil people. I asked thorn a few questions as to the way, and where the clergyman and overseer lived ; but they scarcely heard me, and gave no answer At length I came to a place where the road branched off into two turnpikes, ono to the right about, and the other straight forward. On going by, I saw a milestone standing under the hedge, and I turned back to read it, to see where the other road led to. I found it led to London. I then suddenly forgot which was north or south, and though I narrowly examined both ways, I could see no tree, or bush, or stone heap that I could recollect having passed. I went on mile after mile, almost convinced I was going the same way I had come. These thoughts were so strong upon me, and doubts and hopelessness made me turn so feeble, that I was scarcely able to walk. Yet I could not sit down or give up, but shuffled along till I saw a lamp shining as bright as the moon, which, on nearing, I found was suspended over a tollgate. Beforo I got through, the man came out with a candle, and eyed me narrowly ; but having no fear, I stopped to ask him whether I was going northward. He said, When you got through the gate you are.' I thanked him, and went through to the other side, and gathered my old strength as my doubts vanished. I soon cheered up, and hummed the air of Highland Mary' as I went on. I at length came to an odd house, all alone, near a wood ; but I could not see what the sign was, though it seemed to stand, oddly enough, in a sort of trough, or spout. There was a large porch over the door, and being weary I crept in, and was glad enough to find I could lie with my legs straight. The inmates were all gone to rest, for I could hear them turn over in bed, while I lay at fall length on the stones in the porch. I slept hero till daylight, and felt very much refreshed. I blest my two wives and both their families when I laid down and when I got up in the morning."

There is no question but that the beauty of Clare's poetry in- creased as this gulf between him and the rest of the world widened. The universal or general side of his intellect was so little cultivated, that the effort to translate himself, as it were, in thought and practice into the world in which others lived subtracted too much from his small fend of intellectual strength. There was no real egotism in his mental insulation. A being more deeply wrapped up in his affections,—though they were too often affec- tions little returned,--scarcely ever existed. That which he loved

both in nature and human life he cherished with the absorbing enthusiasm of a poet and a child. His insulation therefore was simply a kind of mental inarticulateness, a want of power to see in other than familiar objects the same qualities which he really loved so deeply in them, and which, with a little more of that mental elasticity which early culture gives, he would have soon learned to see in more universal aspects, and to be able to separate from the particular forms in which he had first learned to love them. We cannot refrain from quoting here once more the really wonderful lines which we quoted when writing on occasion of Clare's death, because in their sublime sadness and their inco- herence, they sum up the one great misfortune of the poet's life, his mental isolation,—his inability to make his deepest character and thoughts intelligible to others —with such marvellous effect. It is like the wail of a nature cut off from all access to other minds, concentrated at its own centre, and conscious of the im- passable gulf which separates it from universal humanity "I am ! yet what I am who cares, or knows ?

My friends forsake me like a memory lost. I am the self-consumer of my woes, They rise and vanish, an oblivious host, Shadows of life, whose very soul is lost. And yet I am—I live—though I am toss'd "Into the nothingness of scorn and noise, Into the living sea of waking dream, Where there is neither sense of life, nor joys, But the huge shipwreck of my own esteem And all that's dear. Even those I loved the best 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 Full of high thoughts, unborn. So lot me lie, The grass below ; above the vaulted sky."

The biography of Clare should be a permanent addition to

English literature. Are we not to have a complete edition of his per?