111 Thriving on seams: here ‘seam’ is used in its older, now obsolete, sense of an intervening strip of land, i.e. with water on both sides. In the next line, the manuscript reads ‘island’, but the sense requires the plural; ‘swell’ is used transitively.

p. 119 But they who hunt the field: i.e. gypsies, Clare was on close terms with the gypsies of his area: it was from them that he learned to play the fiddle; and when he came to escape from his first asylum, it was to gypsies that Clare typically turned for guidance.

p. 120 The shepherd threw: the manuscript reads ‘through’, but there seems to be nothing gained from keeping such errors in transcription. We all make such mistakes, especially when tired or momentarily inattentive, and they have no linguistic/stylistic significance whatsoever. This stanza offers an extreme case of Clare’s parataxis, each line comprising a simple sentence. The disjointedness seems to express the rhythm of the action.

p. 121 The Badger: in this sonnet-sequence, I have chosen to place the ‘Some keep a baited badger . . .’ sonnet after the first, rather than last, since in the terminal position it is gratingly anti-climactic.

p. 125 To violets I compare: in MC, the second word reads ‘voilets’. In an equally good manuscript source, it reads ‘violets’. The case for the former is that it offers a clue to Clare’s phonetics. The case for ‘violets’ is that it is free of quaintness and does not draw attention to itself as odd. The presentation of Clare’s poetry raises many such questions: my present purpose is to minimize distractions or obstacles, while respecting the peculiar integrity of Clare’s text.

p. 126 Dedication to Mary: in the manuscripts, ‘Mary’ appears in the title as four asterisks and in line 1 as M ***. Clare’s conduct as a lyrical poet was fraught with circumstantial problems, since he was paying explicit homage to Mary whilst living with Martha (Patty).

p. 130 Scarce nine days passed us ere we met: M C omits ‘us’, but the metre requires it.

Now nine years’ suns: Clare’s relationship with Mary ended in 1816; this poem was published in the Souvenir in 1826.

p. 131 Ballad: the last stanza encapsulates Clare’s dilemma: ‘another (Patty) claims [to be] akin’ but Mary must recognize her own right also to claim a bond. This is a foreshadowing of Clare’s later obsessive efforts to resolve the contradictions of his emotions, which finally gave rise to his belief that he had committed bigamy.

p. 135 The Enthusiast: this is one of Clare’s most ambitious attempts to achieve psychological sense or coherence à propos Mary’s place in his mind, her continuing and virtually continuous ‘presence’. He achieves only a partial resolution in the paradox of ‘aching joy’. So it was to be, for the rest of his life.

White: Henry Kirke White, the son of a butcher, was encouraged by Southey and published a volume of precocious verse. He died at the age of twenty-one in 1806.

p. 138 That blue of thirteen summers bye: if Clare had last met Mary in 1816, this would suggest an 1829 dating for the poem.

p. 143Ballad: the last stanza offers Clare’s alternative resolution of his contradictions: ‘woman’s cold perverted will/ And soon-estranged opinion’: not merely disenchantment but also a dismissive bitterness. Clare returned to this view in his ‘Old Wigs and Sundries’ under the influence of Byron’s Don Juan, but it was not by any means his most characteristic determination.

p. 145 Ere sun: the MS reads ‘suns’, but the sense requires ‘sun’.

p.