earthen vessels; and coins, with, the images of many emperors--so
numerous that it looked as if they had been sown there. To reconstruct
the ancient Roman city, to people it anew with the conquerors of the
world, was a task at once undertaken by zealous antiquarians; yet Clare,
though he heard the matter mentioned by numerous visitors to the 'Blue
Bell,' and had plenty of time for investigation, took so little interest
in it as not even to attempt a walk to the city of ruins, on the borders
of which he was feeding his cattle. Now, as up to a late period of his
life, a bunch of sweet violets was worth to John Clare more than all the
ruins of antiquity.

While at the 'Blue Bell' John gradually dropped his algebra and
mathematics, and began to read ghost-stories. The reason of his leaving
the 'sciences called pure' was the discovery that the further he
proceeded on the road the more he saw his utter incapacity to
understand and to master the subjects. His friend and guide, John
Turnill,--subsequently promoted to a post in the excise--was equally
unable to throw light into the darkness of _plus_ and _minus_, and after
a few last convulsive struggles to get through the 'known quantities'
into the unknown regions of _x_, _y_, and _z_, he gave it up as a
hopeless effort. The spare hours henceforth were devoted to studies of a
very different kind, namely, fairy tales and ghost stories. Under the
roof of the 'Blue Bell' no other literature was within his reach, and he
was quite content to draw temporary nourishment from it. Scarcely any
books but these highly spiced ones, stuffed in the pack of travelling
pedlars, ever found their way to Helpston. There was 'Little Red
Riding-hood,' 'Valentine and Orson,' 'Sinbad the Sailor,' 'The Seven
Sleepers,' 'Mother Shipton,' 'Johnny Armstrong,' 'Old Nixon's Prophecy,'
and a whole host of similar 'sensation' stories, printed on coarse paper,
with a flaming picture on the title-page. John Clare scarcely knew that