he sternly exclaimed, handing the many-coloured slips of paper back to
his poor friend. John Clare was humiliated beyond measure: he felt like
one having committed a dreadful, unpardonable crime. Because the sense of
the words was not at all clear to him, he was the deeper impressed with
the consciousness of the heinous misdeed of having written verses without
knowing grammar. So he resolved to know grammar, even should he perish in
the attempt.

To ask Mr. Thomas Porter by what means he could get to know grammar, he
had not the courage: the ground was burning under his feet in the little
cottage at Ashton Green. John Clare, therefore, took his farewell without
seeking further information, and hurried off to the house of a lad with
whom he had been at Mr. Merrishaw's school. Did he know where or what
grammar was? Yes, the lad knew; he had plunged into grammar at Mr.
Merrishaw's, instead of into algebra and the pure sciences. But he could
not tell how to learn grammar, except through one very difficult work,
bound in leather, and called 'The Critical Spelling-book.' To get this
wonderful book now became the all-absorbing thought of John Clare. Penny
after penny was hoarded by immense exertions, and the greatest frugality,
approaching to a want of the necessaries of life. The two shillings for
the 'Critical Spelling-book' were saved at length, and John once more
made his way to the Stamford bookseller, as eager as when in quest of
Thomson's 'Seasons.' He was lucky enough to get 'Lowe's Critical
Spelling-book' at once; but, having got it, underwent a fearful
disappointment. Reading it under the hedge on the roadside, in his
anxiety to possess the contents; reading it at his noonday meal; and
reading it again at the evening fireside--the more he read it, the less
could he understand it. Algebra and the pure sciences had puzzled him
infinitely less than this awful grammar. Worthy Mr. Lowe's 'Critical
Spelling-book,' happily forgotten by the present generation, instilled