little cottage at Helpstone they must have learnt to dread these London journeys, for he invariably came back unhappy and discontented, and not able to apply himself to ordinary work.
Instead of finding him some post of usefulness, where he could labour either mentally or physically, his patrons thought that the best possible thing to do was to endow him with an annuity. Once Clare wanted to spend a part o the fund in a small freehold, and turn farmer. The brothers Billings had found the usual end of such ways. They were deeply in debt, and forced to sell their freehold. They offered it to Clare, but, to his great chagrin, Lord Radstock, who was a trustee of the fund, would not consent to its purchase. Unhappily that disinterested and intelligent friend died too early for Clare's advantage. Clare, anxious to do something, persisted in his scheme of becoming a farmer, and got deeper and deeper into pecuniary embarrassment.
In 1821 came out his second volume of poems, "The Village Minstrel," but the sensation was over; the peasant poet was oiit of fashion, and the book did not sell. The volume is tinged throughout with a more continuous and profounder melancholy than the "Rural Life and Scenery," showing that worldly fame had already made a sad life sadder. His family was increasing; so, what with disappointment and debt, it is not surprising that he fell ill.
In 1825 "The Shepherd's Calendar" was published, and although it contains some of the most wonderfully descriptive nature-painting in the English language, and some most touching tales—as true to village life as Crabbe's—it was not a success.
There are few bits of nature-painting finer than his description of a July day, one of those days when hour after hour the summer heat grows fiercer and fiercer—
"Till noon burns with its blistering breath
Around, and day dies still as death:
The busy noise of man and brute
Is on a sudden lost and mute;
E'en the brook that leaps along
Seems weary of its bubbling song,
And so soft its waters creep,
Tired silence sinks in sounder sleep.
The cricket on its banks is dumb,
The very flies forget to hum;
