write" as he had been, and (presumably in reply to some offer of books or comforts) "I want nothing from Home to come here. I shall be glad to see you when you come." In the course of 1860 he was photographed, and that the Northampton folk still took an interest in their poet is proved by the sale of these likenesses; copies could be seen in the shops until recent years. But that Clare might have been set at large seems not to have occurred to those who in curiosity purchased his portrait. A visitor named John Plummer went to the asylum in 1861, and found Clare reading in the window recess of a very comfortable room. "Time had dealt kindly with him," he wrote. "It was in vain that we strove to arrest his attention: he merely looked at us with a vacant gaze for a moment, and then went on reading his book." This was possibly rather the action of sanity than of insanity. Yet Plummer did his best, in _Once a Week_ and elsewhere, to call attention to the forgotten poet, who was visited soon afterwards by the worthy Nonconformist Paxton Hood, and presently by Joseph Whitaker, the publisher of the "Almanack." Clare became patriarchal in appearance; and his powers failed more rapidly, until he could walk no longer. A wheel-chair was procured for him, that he might still enjoy the garden and the open air. On Good Friday in 1864 he was taken out for the last time; afterwards he could not be moved, yet he would still manage to reach his window-seat; then came paralysis, and on the afternoon of May the 20th, 1864, His soul seemed with the free, He died so quietly.