printed some lines in the _London Journal_ for November 2lst asking
the aid of Heaven to restore Clare to his home and his poetry (for he
seems to have written little at that time); a gentleman who was in a
position to judge wrote also that in the spring of 1860 his mind was
calmer than it had been for years, and that he was induced to write
verses once more. But Clare was sixty-seven years old; it was perhaps
too late to release him, and perhaps he had grown past the desire of
liberty. On the 7th of March he wrote to Patty, asking after all his
children and some of his friends, and sending his love to his father
and mother (so long since dead); signing himself "Your loving husband
till death, John Clare." On the 8th he wrote a note to Mr. Hopkins:
"Why I am shut up I don't know." And on the 9th he answered his "dear
Daughter Sophia's letter," saying that he was "not quite so well to
write" as he had been, and (presumably in reply to some offer of books
or comforts) "I want nothing from Home to come here. I shall be glad
to see you when you come." In the course of 1860 he was photographed,
and that the Northampton folk still took an interest in their poet is
proved by the sale of these likenesses; copies could be seen in the
shops until recent years. But that Clare might have been set at large
seems not to have occurred to those who in curiosity purchased his
portrait. A visitor named John Plummer went to the asylum in 1861, and
found Clare reading in the window recess of a very comfortable room.
"Time had dealt kindly with him," he wrote. "It was in vain that we
strove to arrest his attention: he merely looked at us with a vacant
gaze for a moment, and then went on reading his book." This was
possibly rather the action of sanity than of insanity. Yet Plummer did
his best, in _Once a Week_ and elsewhere, to call attention to
the forgotten poet, who was visited soon afterwards by the worthy
Nonconformist Paxton Hood, and presently by Joseph Whitaker, the
publisher of the "Almanack."