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 . . . as is their custom, rising first.

p. 67 And wind-enarmourd aspin: the best appreciation and analysis of Clare’s language is Barbara M. H. Strang’s essay, ‘John Clare’s Language’, published as an appendix to RM. Of ‘enarmourd’ she writes, ‘Enarmoured surely “contains” enamoured, but . . . appears in contexts in which the image of armour is also appropriate . . .’ Cf. p. 51, first line.

As wonting: ‘wonting’ or ‘wanting’? Either/or? Or both/ and? As Barbara Strang remarks, ‘It is not the editor’s business to preclude the reader from perceiving these double images.’

p.