Is not this nature itself? And again another nest, as true every whit in its difference. THE PETTICHAP'S NEST. Well! in my many walks I've rarely found Its nest; close by the rut-gulled wagon-road, And they are left to many dangerous ways. * A green grasshopper's jump might break the shells; THE YELLOWHAMMER'S NEST. Just by the wooden bridge a bird flew up, And seek its nest. The brook we need not dread,— As it sings harmless o'er its pebbly bed. -Ay, here it is! Stuck close beside the bank, Its husk-seeds tall and high: 'tis rudely planned Five eggs, pen-scribbled o'er with ink their shells, They are the Yellowhammer's; and she dwells, I question if the great bird-painter, Wilson, or our own Australian ornithologist, Mr. Gould (he is a Berkshire man, I am proud to say), or Audubon, or White of Selborne, or Mr. Waterton himself, and all those careful inquirers into nature are more or less poets, seldom as they have used the conventional language of poetry,-I question if any of these eminent writers have ever exceeded the minuteness and accuracy of these birds' nests. The Poem called "Insects" is scarcely less beautiful. These tiny loiterers on the barley's beard, Smoothing the velvet of the pale hedge-rose, And as I have said above, other qualities too had supervened. The delicacy of sentiment in the following stanzas bears no touch of the nacultivated peasant. FIRST LOVE'S RECOLLECTIONS. First love will with the heart remain And joy's first dreams will haunt the mind Mary! I dare not call thee dear, Had time and change not blotted out The love of former days, Thou wert the first that I should doubt Of pleasing with my praise. When honeyed tokens from each tongue Thouds't startle like an untamed bird, How loth to part, how fond to meet, At sunset with what eager feet I hastened unto thee! Scarce nine days passed us ere we met, Thy face was so familiar grown, A moment's memory when alone, F I felt a pride to name thy name, I felt I then thy heart did share, But much I doubt if thou couldst spare And what is now my name to thee, To please some idle ear. And yet like counterfeits with me Though all the gilded finery That passed for truth is gone. Ere the world smiled upon my lays, But now methinks thy fervent love And songs that other hearts approve, When last thy gentle cheek I pressed I little thought that seeming jest A fate like this hath oft befell E'en loftier hopes than ours; Spring bids full many buds to swell, That was John Clare's last volume, published in 1839, and although generously noticed by the press, it did not sell. Perhaps the very imperfections of the earlier works had made a part of their charm. There is a certain pleasure in being called upon to show indulgence to one whose high gifts are indisputable. Besides the complacency always attending a sense of superiority of any kind, it flatters one's self-love most agreeably (I am speaking of readers, not of critics), to be able to detect and to point out beauties under the vail of defects. Still greater was the pride of being among the first discoverers of such endowments. With the novelty that pleasure vanished. Every child boasts the violet of his own finding, and cherishes and caresses it-while it is fresh ; then it disappears and is no more thought of. Woe to us if so we treat a still tenderer flower! However it happened, the popularity diminished as the merit increased. The public, usually so just in its ultimate estimate of authors, failed in this particular instance to recognize the strong and honest claim upon a fair and liberal patronage possessed by one who had been taken from his own humble avocation, from the homely work but the certain reward of the plow, to cultivate the always uncertain, and too often barren and unthankful fields of literature. Such, I fear, poor Clare found them. Improvement had come, but with improvement came sickness and anxiety. The little income had soon been found inadequate to the wants of his aged parents and the demands of an increasing family; for they will marry, these poets! Poverty overwhelmed him, and illness,—and they who still took a kindly interest in one who had crept so close to the heart of nature in coppice and in field,-heard with sorrowful sympathy that the illness was of the mind. It has been said that pecuniary difficulties were the real cause of the malady, and that the removal of all anxiety as to the means of living would at once cure the delusions under which he labors, and restore him to his home and to his family. I wish it were so, for I think if that were true (and certainly the fact ought to be ascertained, as nearly as any thing of that nature can be ascertained by medical examination), that they who so benevolently lent their aid to lift him from his original obscurity, would, aided by others of a like spirit, step forward to rescue from a still deeper darkness one whose talents had so well justified their former bounty. In the meanwhile it is an alleviation to the painful feeling excited by such a narrative to know that the poor poet, perfectly gentle and harmless, enjoys in the asylum where he is placed, the wise freedom of person and of action which is the triumph of humanity and of science in the present day. A few years ago he was visited by a friend of mine, himself a poet of the people, who gave me a most interesting account of the then state of his intellect. His delusions were at that time very singular in their character. Whatever he read, whatever recurred to him from his former reading, or happened to be men |