prefixed to ‘Architectura Ecclesiastica Londini,’ a series of views by John Coney, George Shepherd, and other artists, of the churches of London, published in folio, 1819, and reissued with a new title-page the following year.
[Gent. Mag. new ser. xvii. 342; Smith's Bibliotheca Cantiana, pp. 153, 210, 211; Cruden's Gravesend, p. 459; Biog. Dict. of Living Authors, 1816.]
CLARKE, CHARLES COWDEN (1787–1877), author, musician, and lecturer, was born at Enfield, Middlesex, on 15 Dec. 1787, on the site (now occupied by the railway station) of the schoolhouse kept by John Clarke, his father. John Clarke had been a lawyer's clerk at Northampton, and afterwards an usher in a school in the same town, where Charles Lamb's friend George Dyer was his colleague. He died in December 1820. The picturesque front of the Enfield schoolhouse was so fine an example of ornamental brickwork that it has been preserved in the South Kensington Museum. John Keats (b. 1795) was a pupil at the elder Clarke's school when six or seven years old, and Charles, a lad of fourteen or fifteen, taught the child almost his first letters, and afterwards taught him to love and appreciate poetry, a fact affectionately attested in Keats's 'Epistle to Charles Cowden Clarke.' Charles Lamb, with whom Clarke was in friendly relationship for many years, took a house at Enfield in 1827, and wrote a humorous letter about the school to Clarke, dated 26 Feb. 1828: 'Traditions are rife here of one Clarke, a schoolmaster, and a runaway teacher named Holmes [i.e. Edward Holmes, one of Keats's fellow-pupils], but much obscurity hangs over it. Is it possible they can be any relations?' While a schoolboy Clarke was passionately devoted to the theatre, and would walk of an evening from Enfield to London and back to witness the performance of Mrs. Siddons, Miss O'Neil, or Edmund Kean. For some time after reaching manhood Clarke continued to live with his father and mother, who retired about 1810 from the school at Enfield, and took a house at Ramsgate. He made, however, frequent visits to London, where two married sisters had settled; had the good fortune to be introduced at a London party to Leigh Hunt, with whose literary and political opinions he completely sympathised; came to know Vincent Novello; met Shelley and Hazlitt at Leigh Hunt's cottage at Hampstead; visited Charles and Mary Lamb when they were staying at Margate; and first appeared in print as a contributor of some essays on 'Walks round London' to Leigh Hunt's 'Literary Pocket Book' in 1820. About the same time Leigh Hunt visited Clarke at Ramsgate before starting for Italy, and in 1821 Clarke introduced himself to Coleridge, whom he met by accident on the East Cliff, Ramsgate. His father's death in 1820 broke up the establishment at Ramsgate: his mother went soon afterwards to live with a daughter in the west of England, and he himself settled in London. He engaged in business as a bookseller and publisher on his own account, but before long entered into partnership as a music publisher with Alfred Novello, Vincent Novello's son.
In the 'Novello circle' Clarke found his wife. On 5 July 1828 he married Mary Victoria (b. 1809), the eldest daughter of his friend Vincent Novello, whom he had first met when a little girl at Leigh Hunt's cottage ten years earlier. The honeymoon was spent at Enfield. The marriage was exceptionally happy. For some years the Clarkes lived with the Novello family at Craven Hill Cottage, Bayswater, and a year after the marriage Mrs. Cowden Clarke began her invaluable 'Concordance to Shakespeare's Plays,' produced after sixteen years' labour in 1845. Both husband and wife mixed largely in literary society. Clarke was with William Hazlitt shortly before his death in 1830; the acquaintance with Charles Lamb was strengthened by visits to Enfield or Edmonton. Through the Novellos Clarke came to know musicians like John Cramer and F. B. Mendelssohn, and added after 1830 to his list of acquaintances Douglas Jerrold, Macready, and Charles Dickens.
From 1825 Clarke contributed for some years articles, chiefly on the fine arts and the drama, to the 'Atlas' newspaper and the 'Examiner.' In 1828 he issued 'Readings in Natural Philosophy.' In 1883 he published 'Tales from Chaucer' (new ed. 1870), which was followed in 1835 by the 'Riches of Chaucer' (new ed. 1870), and forms a good example of his love of literature and knowledge of the poets. In 1833 he edited Nyren's 'Young Cricketers' Tutor,' and in 1834 wrote ' Adam the Gardener,' a boys' book.
In 1834 Clarke began the great work of his life—the public lectures on Shakespeare and other dramatists and poets. A taste for lectures was arising, and Clarke won great popularity. His lecturing career, which began in 1834, ended in 1856, his first lecture being delivered at the Mechanics' Institute, Royston, on Chaucer, and his farewell lecture at the Mechanics' Institution of Northampton on Molière. He made a number of friends in nearly every provincial town, and lectured for twenty successive years at the London
