sat in his study, writing more and more paraphrases of the Old
Testament, together with series of sonnets of a grotesque, rustic
sort, not resembling any other poems in our language.

The "Midsummer Cushion" had been set aside, but Clare had submitted
many of the poems together with hundreds more to Messrs. Whittaker.
Largely through the recommendations of Mr. Emmerson, the publishers
decided to print a volume from these, picking principally those poems
which had already shown themselves respectable by appearing in the
annuals. One even written in 1820, "The Autumn Robin," was somehow
chosen, to the exclusion of such later poems as "Remembrances"
and "The Fallen Elm." With faults like these, the selection was
nevertheless a distinctly beautiful book of verse. In March, 1834,
Clare definitely received forty pounds for the copyright, and finally
in July, 1835, appeared this his last book, "The Rural Muse." Its
success was half-hearted, in spite of a magnificent eulogy by
Christopher North in _Blackwood's_, and of downright welcome by the
_Athenaeum_, the _New Monthly_ and other good judges. There was a slow
sale for several months, but for Clare there was little chance of new
remuneration. This he could regard calmly, for while the book was in
the press he had received from the Literary Fund a present of fifty
pounds.

Clare's malady slowly increased. The exact history of this decline is
almost lost, yet we may well believe that the death of his mother on
the 18th of December, 1835, was a day of double blackness for him.
The winter over, Patty made a great fight for his reason, and at last
persuaded him to go out for walks, which checked the decline. Now he
became so passionately fond of being out-of-doors that "he could not
be made to stop a single day at home." In one of these roving walks he