CONSIGNED TO THE MAD-HOUSE.

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remember passing through Buckden, and going a length of road afterwards; but I do not recollect the name of any place until I came to Stilton, where I was completely footsore, bleeding, and broken down. When I had got about half-way through the town, a gravel causeway invited me to rest myself; so I laid down and nearly went 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.

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 mad-house, 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, and certain indications of madness. Yes, it was; whatever was the state of Clare's mind, it was his chief mark of delirium that he wrote verses. So he was torn away to the mad-house; 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 were paid for his support, and this by the late Earl Fitzwilliam, a sum which did not entitle him to much better treatment than a pauper, he was placed in the best ward, and among the private patients. The heads of the asylum did honour to themselves as well as Clare, 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 friends, or patrons ever visited him, and all his family kept aloof from him; the world left him, and he, long before he left it, was quite prepared to leave the world but this neglect preyed upon him. In one of these moods he gave utterance to the following truly sublime burst of feeling :

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 let me lie,
The grass below; above the vaulted sky.

But lucid intervals often flashed through the bars of his being he wrote down many tender lines, which we wonder have not been published; but into our note-book we, many years since, extracted the following as remarkably beautiful :

MUSINGS IN A MAD-HOUSE.

BEAUTY AND VIRTUE.

When Beauty fills the lover's eyes,
And lives like doubtful weather,
Her bosom seems to sleep with Love-
They lie like birds together.

Love finds them angels, ready made,
So beautiful and blooming;

But Time comes in, though half afraid,
And rudely calls them Women.

Time, like a robber, every year
Takes all the fame he gives;
While Beauty only goes away,
And Virtue only lives.

The following also, entitled—

SIGHING FOR RETIREMENT.

Oh, take me from the busy crowd,

I cannot bear the noise!

For Nature's voice is never loud;
I seek for quiet joys.

The book I love is everywhere,
And not in idle words;

The book I love is known to all,

And better lore affords.

The book I love is everywhere,
And every place the same;

God bade me make my dwelling there,
And look for better fame.

I never feared the critic's pen,
To live by my renown;
I found the poems in the fields,
And only wrote them down.

And quiet Epping pleases well,
Where Nature's love delays;

I joy to see the quiet place,
And wait for better days.

I love to seek the brakes and fern,
And rabbits up and down;

And then the pleasant Autumn comes,
And turns them all to brown.

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And

To common eyes they only seem
A desert waste and drear;
To taste and love they always shine
A garden through the year.

Lord, keep my love for quiet joys-
Oh! keep me to Thy will!

I know Thy works, but always find
Thy mercies kinder still.

TO THE NIGHTINGALE.

I love to hear the Nightingale

She comes where Summer dwells-
Among the brake and orchis flowers,
And foxglove's freckled bells.

Where mugwort grows like mignonette,
And molehills swarm with ling;
She hides among the greener May,
And sings her love to Spring.

I hear her in the forest beech,
When beautiful and new;

Where cow-boys hunt the glossy leaf,
Where falls the honey-dew.

Where brambles keep the waters cool
For half the Summer long;
The maiden sets her pitcher down,
And stops to hear the song.

The redcap is a painted bird,
And sings about the town;
The Nightingale sings all the eve,
In sober suit of brown.

I knew the sparrow could not sing,
And heard the stranger long;
I could not think so plain a bird
Could sing so fine a song.

I found her nest of oaken leaves,
And eggs of paler brown,
Where none would ever look for nests,
Or pull the sedges down.

I found them on a white-thorn root,
And in the woodland hedge,

All in a low and stumpy bush,
Half hid among the sedge.

"I WANT TO GO HOME.”

I love the Poet of the woods,

And love to hear her sing,

That, with the cuckoo, brings the love
And music of the Spring.

Man goes by art to foreign lands,
With shipwreck and decay;
Birds go with Nature for their guide,
And GOD directs their way.

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.

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On the 20th of May, 1864, poor Clare closed his eyes for ever. 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. Some will very likely inquire, Who was he? was he a poet? what did he do? what are his claims? and we think his biographer 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 writing 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 descriptive, 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 bird, and flower, relieved and lightened up an infinite background of mystery; as really as to Wordsworth himself, the aureola of the mystical glo