son, to the benefit of both. In 1835, one of many sonnets was addressed
to this excellent soul:

Turnill, we toiled together all the day,
And lived like hermits from the boys at play;
We read and walked together round the fields,
Not for the beauty that the journey yields--
But muddied fish, and bragged oer what we caught,
And talked about the few old books we bought.
Though low in price you knew their value well,
And I thought nothing could their worth excel;
And then we talked of what we wished to buy,
And knowledge always kept our pockets dry.
We went the nearest ways, and hummed a song,
And snatched the pea pods as we went along,
And often stooped for hunger on the way
To eat the sour grass in the meadow hay.

One of these "few old books" was Thomson's "Seasons", which gave
a direction to the poetic instincts of Clare, already manifesting
themselves in scribbled verses in his exercise-books.

Read, mark, learn as Clare might, no opportunity came for him to enter
a profession. "After I had done with going to school it was proposed
that I should be bound apprentice to a shoemaker, but I rather
disliked this bondage. I whimpered and turned a sullen eye on every
persuasion, till they gave me my will. A neighbour then offered to
learn me his trade--to be a stone mason,--but I disliked this too....
I was then sent for to drive the plough at Woodcroft Castle of Oliver
Cromwell memory; though Mrs. Bellairs the mistress was a kind-hearted