for the greatest excellence, and rudest indecency for the finest wit."
None the less he recovered sufficient material to train himself into
the manner of these "old and beautiful recollections." But whatever
he might write or edit, he was unlikely to find publishers willing
to bring out. The "Village Minstrel" had barely passed the first
thousand, and the "second edition" was not melting away. Literature
after all was not money, and to increase Clare's anxiety and dilemma
came illness. In the early months of 1823, he made a journey to
Stamford to ask the help of his old friend Gilchrist.

Gilchrist was already in the throes of his last sickness, and Clare
took his leave without a word of his own difficulties. Arriving home,
he fell into a worse illness than before; but as the spring came on he
rallied, and occasionally walked to Stamford to call on his friend,
who likewise seemed beginning to mend. On the 30th of June, Clare was
received with the news "Mr. Gilchrist is dead." Clare relapsed into a
curious condition which appeared likely to overthrow his life or his
reason when Taylor most fortunately came to see him, and procured him
the best doctor in Peterborough. This doctor not only baffled
Clare's disease, but, rousing attention wherever he could in the
neighbourhood, was able to provide him with good food and even some
old port from the cellar of the Bishop of Peterborough.

At last on the advice of the good doctor and the renewed invitation of
Taylor, Clare made a third pilgrimage to London, and this time stayed
from the beginning of May till the middle of July, 1824. Passing the
first three weeks in peaceful contemplation of London crowds, he
was well enough then to attend a _London Magazine_ dinner, where De
Quincey swam into his ken, and the next week a similar gathering where
Coleridge talked for three hours. Clare sat next to Charles Elton and