might be worth less; in the first case Clare, in the second himself
would lose on the affair; besides, there were money-lenders and legal
niceties to beware of; let not Clare "be ambitious but remain in the
state in which God had placed him." Thus the miserable officiousness
went on, and if Clare for a time found some comfort in the glass who
can blame him? In his own words, "for enemies he cared nothing, from
his friends he had much to fear." He was "thrown back among all the
cold apathy of killing kindness that had numbed him ... for years."

In May, 1822, Clare spent a brief holiday in London, meeting there the
strong men of the _London Magazine_, Lamb, Hood, and therest. From
his clothes, the _London_ group called him The Green Man; Lamb took a
singular interest in him, and was wont to address him as "Clarissimus"
and "Princely Clare." Another most enthusiastic acquaintance was a
painter named Rippingille, who had begun life as the son of a farmer
at King's Lynn, and who was now thoroughly capable of taking Clare
into the most Bohemian corners of London. Suddenly, however, news came
from Helpston recalling the poet from these perambulations, and he
returned in haste, to find his second daughter born, Eliza Louisa,
god-child of Mrs. Emmerson and Lord Radstock.

At this time, Clare appears to have been writing ballads of a truly
rustic sort, perhaps in the light of his universal title, The
Northamptonshire Peasant Poet. He would now, moreover, collect such
old ballads and songs as his father and mother or those who worked
with him might chance to sing; but was often disappointed to find that
"those who knew fragments seemed ashamed to acknowledge it ... and
those who were proud of their knowledge in such things knew nothing
but the senseless balderdash that is brawled over and sung at country
feasts, statutes, and fairs, where the most senseless jargon passes