JOHN CLARE was born at Helpstone, on the 13th day of July, 1793, and born into a heritage of handicaps. To say nothing of the fruits of exposure to rough weathers which were ripening in his father’s system, the boy had the disadvantage of being one of twins, a sister accompanying him into the world. His mother suffered from dropsy, and we may well believe that what life the children sucked from her breast contained elements threatening their future health. Small and frail, the lad had the additional misfortune to open his eyes in the cottage of a pauper, instead of in some abode where his natural weakness could have been nourished by foods giving inward encouragement, and of a sort sure to result in the building up of hearty fibre. Despite all these early rebuffs, JOHN CLARE kept hold of life. When still very young he set out full of faith to explore the junction of earth and heaven, for on the horizon he could see the point of their meeting. In this incident, as well as in many another of his childhood, it is easy to detect signs of a spirit triumphantly unfitted for residence in a clay hovel at Helpstone. As luck would have it, a kind of rough-and-ready poetry was not altogether out of the boy’s reach, for his father’s head was stuffed with innumerable odds-and-ends of rhyme, some of which he was in the habit of reciting to his son. Entertainment of the same sort was obtainable from old Granny Bains, a weather-worn cow-herd, to whom the future poet was attracted by her store of ditties; whose especial cronies were the wind and rain. Under such illiterate tutors little JOHN CLARE moved closer and closer to the soul of poetry, musing while he put a limit to the vagrancy of the geese and sheep for which he had been appointed guardian as soon as the main part of his schooling was over. His departure from the scholastic bench took place when his years had reached a very unripe total, for with only seven birthdays entered in his book of life, at an age when a child is usually at the commencement of historical and geographical perplexities, he was turned out into the fields as a wage-earner. Instead of feeling elated at his escape from the scholastic coils of Dame Bullimore, as many a lad would have done, JOHN CLARE, being aware of his budding wits, although unable to comprehend the motive force from within, looked round his small district in search of fresh educational territories to be conquered by his brain. Having saved a few pence he made overtures to Mr. James Merrishaw, the schoolmaster of Glinton, and in the duller months of the year, when days were short, he attended certain evening classes, notwithstanding the fact that the journeys involved taxed his boot-leather severely; for Glinton is nearly five miles away from Helpstone. Here he learned well, but not altogether wisely, if we may agree that the boy’s struggles with the intricacies of algebra were conspicuous for mis-applied energy. But