: all texts transcribed from Northampton MSS 6, 8, 9, 10, 19 and 20, Peterborough MS A 62, and Bodleian MS Don. A 64, except for the first three poems, which appeared in the English Journal, May 1841.

 

The English Bastille: all texts transcribed from Knight’s transcripts, Peterborough MSD 24, and from MSS6, 9, 10 and 19, as above; except for ‘And only o’er the heaths . . .’and ‘I look on the past . . .’ which were published in the USA in June 1937.

p. 31 Clare used the sonnet-form throughout his life. In his early sonnets he is an invisible spectator, watching and listening; in the prospect, he blends both near and far, animating the landscape with movements of birds, animals and representative humans. Many of these sonnets end with a brief evaluation, an affirmation of positive satisfactions.

p. 32 The Wheat Ripening: Clare’s models for his earlier poetry derive from eighteenth-century topographical poetry: the marks of ‘literariness’ can be detected in ‘What time the . . .’, ‘maiden’, ‘list’ the clown’, ‘lark’s ditty’: this is clearly not the language of his village neighbours.

p. 33 A Morning Walk: throughout 1831 and 1832 Clare wrote out a fair copy of the poems that he wished to include in a projected volume, The Midsummer Cushion: his proposal to publish this by subscription failed, and some of the contents of the manuscript were selected, modified, edited and cleaned up by other hands to form The Rural Muse, 1835. Since the poems in the Midsummer Cushion manuscript (Peterborough, MS A 54) comprise much of Clare’s own presentation of his early maturity (poems written through the 1820s and early 1830s, his age being twenty-seven to thirty-nine), I have chosen most of the poems of the pre-asylum years from this source.

p. 34 Allnightly things are on the run: MC reads ‘on the rout’, but the rhyme-scheme requires ‘run’.

p. 38 some wild mysterious book: many chapbooks offered ways of telling fortunes.

p. 39 Or list’ the church-clock’s humming sound: MC reads ‘Or watch . . .’

p. 40 Strength to ferry: at the beginning of this line, the preposition, for, is understood.

p. 45 Evening Pastime: Clare was a voracious reader throughout his life. Here he instances two poets who influenced his early work: Thomson, whose Seasons was the most popular and influential poem of the eighteenth century, and Cowper, whose quiet voice Clare loved. Bloomfield’s case was specially interesting to Clare, for the older poet also came out of the lower strata of English society: his poetry sold very well for a time, and many genteel readers took a patronizing interest in him; he turned his back on his own culture, dismissing it as vulgar, and died after suffering severe melancholy and poverty.

p. 52 Sport in the Meadows: working to establish a poetic language, Clare sometimes went astray: here he has become infatuated with the -en ending, which for late eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century readers offered a sense of the antique: Chatterton used dozens of such devices in his forgeries, and the strongest model for such tricks was probably Spenser.

p. 55 Tuteling: i.e. Tootling. MC reads ‘Tutting’.

p. 65 To see the startled frog his rout pursue: ‘rout’ is used by Clare to signify either ‘route’ or ‘path’, or ‘lively activity’, or both.

p. 66 And swallows heed: i.e., and I heed swallows . .