At length with great pleasure, although after great anxiety and trouble, I have brought your affair with Mr. How to a conclusion. I have enclosed a receipt for your signature, and if you will write your name at the bottom of it and return it enclosed in a letter to me, I shall have the L40 in ready money for you immediately. You will perceive by the receipt that I have sold only the copyright of the first edition, and that Mr. How stipulates shall consist of only 750 copies, or at the utmost 1000. And now, with the license of a friend, I am about to talk to you about your affairs. This money has been hardly earned by your mental labour, and with difficulty obtained by me for you, only by great perseverance. We are therefore most anxious it should be the means of freeing you from all debt or incumbrance, in order that your mind may be once more at ease, and that you may revel with your muse at will, regardless of all hauntings save hers, and when she troubles you can pay her off in her own coin. The sum you stated some time since I think was L35 as sufficient to clear all your debts, and thus you will be able to start fairly with the world again." While the "Rural Muse" was in the press, Mr. How, one of the very few of Clare's earlier friends who are still living, suggested to him the advisableness of his applying to the committee of the Literary Fund for a grant, and promising to exert himself to the utmost to secure the success of the application. Clare applied for L50, and obtained it, whereupon Mrs. Emmerson, to whose heart there was no readier way than that of showing kindness to poor Clare, writes:-- "In my last, I told you I had written to Mr. How on the subject of the Literary Fund, &c. Yesterday morning the good little man came to communicate to me the favourable result of the application. The committee have nobly presented you with fifty pounds. Blessings on them! for giving you the means to do honour to every engagement, and leave you, I hope, a surplus to fly to when needed. Mr. How is just the sort of man for my own nature. He is willing to do his best for Clare. He has shown himself in the recent event as one of the few who perform what they promise. God bless him for his kindly exertions to emancipate you from your thraldom!"