from his pocket a bit of antique pottery, unearthed somewhere in the
grounds between Helpston Heath and Castor. Lord Milton smiled, and
handing the bearer some loose cash, accepted the gift, not forgetting to
state that he would remember the young man thus favourably introduced to
his notice. John Clare instinctively comprehended the meaning of all
this, and went home and made a silent vow never more to seek patronage in
cotton gloves, with a white necktie, and never more to trust his
grandiloquent friend and patron, the parish-clerk.

The failure of all his attempts to raise himself from his low condition,
drove John Clare into a desponding mood. Weak in body, and suffering
under continuous ill-health, his work as a farm-labourer brought him
scarce sufficient remuneration to procure the coarsest food and the
scantiest clothing, while it left him without any means whatever to
assist his parents in their great distress, so that they had to continue
recipients of meagre parish relief. Throughout, Clare had an innate
consciousness of being born to a freer and loftier existence, and thus
deeply felt the burthen of being condemned to the fiercest struggle with
poverty and misery. The bitter feeling engendered by this thought he
surmounted, most frequently, by flying into his favourite realm of
poetry; but often enough the moral strength failed him for the task, and
he sank back in utter hopelessness. More and more was this the case at
this period. He was now verging upon manhood, and with it came, as nobler
aspirations, so baser passions and desires. To these he fell a prey as
soon as he threw aside his slips of paper and pencil, in consequence of
Thomas Porter's sharp rebuke, and the utter failure to master 'Lowe's
Critical Spelling-book.' For many months after, he neither read, nor made
the slightest attempt to write verses, and the idle hours threw him again
into evil company, similar to that from which he had escaped at Burghley
Park. There were, among the labourers of Helpston, two brothers of the