237 



CHAPTER XL 



CONCERN ING BATS. 



" The shrieking bat 

 * * * * # 



Would even swoop, and touch us as he flew ; 

 And vainly still our hopes to entertain, 

 Would stint his route and circle us again." 



THE pictures of rural life and scenery which occur in such rich 

 profusion in the simple verses of John Clare, the peasant poet of 

 Northamptonshire, are drawn with such vivid truthfulness and 

 force that no one can fail to be struck with their aptness and 

 beauty. Poor Clare ! The gay world that once petted and 

 caressed him, as a sort of phenomenon that it did well to make 

 much of, little recks that he still lingers out a lunatic life in 

 hopeless darkness and vacuity. Not long since we went to see 

 him in the asylum at Northampton, where for more than 

 twenty years he has been the companion of idiots and lunatics 

 like himself. It was a sad sight to recognize in the dull and 

 heavy countenance of the poor unfortunate of fifty-eight years, the 

 same features that have such a noble aspect in Hilton's portrait 

 of the poet of twenty-seven, prefixed to his "Village Minstrel," 

 but there was no mistaking the face notwithstanding the change. 

 His conversation if conversation it can be called, was sad- 

 dening too, the more saddening from the odd jumble of good 

 sense with the most extravagant absurdities of which it 

 consisted. The " Quarterly Review " had not long before, in an 

 article on the county of Northampton, referred to his uncourtly 

 behaviour when a real, unsophisticated peasant poet, fresh from 

 the country, he was transported all-a-growing into the hot-bed of 

 London life, under the guidance of Lord Radsteck, his chief 

 showman. On our alluding to the matter with an assumed play- 

 fulness, he said, "Yes, they wanted me to talk fine, but I 

 wouldn't." And then in reply to a question as to whether he 



