again he realised the bitter experience of his "Dream,"[1] and learnt how
"Hopeless distance with a boundless stretch,
Flashed on despair the joy it could not reach,
A moment's mockery."
In Helpstone, an obscure village in Northamptonshire, not far from Peterborough Great Fen, dwelt, towards the close of the last century, one Parker Clare, " a hind born to the flail and plough." He was the child of sin and suffering; his mother a poor girl, misled by the audacious manners and glib tongue of a roving vagabond who had made the village his halting-place for a season.
Parker Clare solaced himself in the only way he could by taking a companion to share his woes. Those were days when wages in Northamptonshire, for able-bodied men, were only eight or nine shillings in summer, and about five or six shillings in winter; but since Parker Clare could never claim to be an able-bodied man, he went through life mainly as a pauper. Knowing what we do of agricultural homes, we may suppose that the dwelling of such a poverty-stricken wretch was just a little more miserable than those of his fellows. But, doubtless, even he felt its misery more acutely when, seven months after he had taken to himself a wife, he became the father of twins. Nevertheless, if he could have seen it, there was just at that time a ruddy glare on the social horizon, which betokened a bright to-morrow. The feudal system, of whose dregs he was a victim, was rapidly passing away. Its sun was setting in blood-red clouds, and all Europe stood aghast, as men who watch in silent horror some awful conflagration. John Clare was born in that "Annus Terribilis," 1793.
He was, as I have said, a twin child, much more sickly than his sister, who died; but, like so many sickly people, the very weakness of the body seemed to give the soul more play. The walls of sense were not so thick, the veil which hid the Invisible was not quite so dense; and if John Clare suffered more than his chubby companions, he was compensated by a power to perceive and enjoy glories which were hidden from them.
Even in his earliest years he discovered, as we have seen, the
- ↑ "The Dream," one of Clare's finest poems, is to be found in the volume entitled "The Shepherd's Calendar."
