The end came in 1864, and on the 25th of May in that year the mortal remnant of JOHN CLARE, peasant and poet, was interred at Helpstone. When Earl Fitzwilliam was asked for a grant of the few pounds necessary for the burial of the poet in the churchyard so beloved by him during his lifetime, he responded by suggesting that the funeral should be that of a pauper at Northampton. However, a few friends of the right heart prevented this disgrace, and the body rested where the soul had marked out for it a spot of greenery and quietude. That some of CLARE’S poems belong of right to the excellent things of this earth admits of no dispute. A worshipper of Nature, by whom he was surely appointed to be one of her chief historians, he revelled in her manifestations, whether they showed in the higher heaven of blue or in the lower heaven of green. He was, if the phrases may pass muster, a gossip of the rainbow, a crony of the flowers. His heart was not less slow than that of Wordsworth to leap up with joy when he beheld standing across the sky, its feet treading the horizon, the most splendid triumphal arch ever devised; and though it was not granted him to render homage to his mistress in such large accents as those which fell from the lips of his great brother in song, he paid for her love and favours in music far from perishable, as may be noted by all who will read the pieces that have been selected for this volume from the “Rural Muse.” Who passes by any one of these poems because he early finds a flaw, does so at his own danger, for each of them belongs, as I venture to assert, so indubitably to the particular treasures of pastoral poetry that I doubt whether the contradiction of our greatest critics could frighten me from the attitude of admiration. To influences other than those of the countryside, CLARE remained unimpressionable. To be in London was to long for Helpstone, the commons and pools of which were more precious to the poet than all the glories of Westminster Abbey, and the expanses of the artificial lakes. While he sojourned in the Metropolis the right spark would not fall from heaven, but as soon as he wandered once more among the scenes so long familiar to him, the Muse was his unfailing companion. Brooks glided in his songs; birds and clouds and leafage were foundations without which he had been well-nigh powerless. He understood, and was content with, his limits; and so perfectly did he accomplish his duty as Nature’s cherished amanuensis, that it is no hard task for a man with an ounce of imagination in his being to hear the trickle of streams, and to fancy his study carpeted with grass, while reading JOHN CLARE’S poems within four walls. As this volume of selections is designed for the purpose of attracting readers to a poet whose appreciative receipts from his posterity are sadly deficient in quantity, the publisher has thought well to ask from me the tale of CLARE’S life, rather than my views of the poet’s work and its effect