carried within himself a strong belief that his verses were not quite
valueless, and therefore resolved upon one more test. Hearing the
constant vaunting of the cheap ballads, he made up his mind to try
whether his father was really able to distinguish between his own verses
and those in print. Accordingly, when he had finished another
composition, he committed it to memory, and rehearsed it to his parents
in the evening, pretending to read it from the print. Then his father
broke out in the delightful exclamation: 'Ah, John, my boy, if thou
couldst make such-like verses, that would do.' This was an immense relief
to the poor scribbler of poetry. He now saw clearly that his father's
want of confidence was in him, the writer, and not in his writings.
Henceforth, he made it his regular habit of reciting his own poetry to
his parents as if reading it from a book, or printed sheet of paper. The
habit, though it was strictly a dishonest proceeding, proved to him not
only a real source of pleasure, in hearing his praises from the lips of
those he loved most, but it also served him as a fair critical school.
Whenever he found his parents laugh at a sentence which he deemed very
pathetic, he set himself at once to correct it to a simpler style;
whenever they asked him for an explanation of a word, or line, he noted
it down as ill-expressed, or obscure; and whenever either his father or
mother asked for a repetition of a song which they had heard before, he
marked the slip of poetry so honoured as a success. And all these
successful slips of paper John Clare placed in a crevice between his bed
and the lath-and-plaster wall; a hole so dark and unfathomable as to be
beyond the reach of even his sharp-eyed mother, always on the look-out
for manuscript poetry to light the fire.

Having gained the surreptitious approval of his verses by his parents,
John Clare began to be moved by a slight and almost unconscious feeling
of ambition. Hitherto he had written poetry solely for the sake of