JOHN (1793-1864), English poet, commonly known as "the
Northamptonshire Peasant Poet," the son of a farm labourer, was born at
Helpstone near Peterborough, on the 13th of July 1793. At the age of
seven he was taken from school to tend sheep and geese; four years later
he began to work on a farm, attending in the winter evenings a school
where he is said to have learnt some algebra. He then became a pot-boy
in a public-house and fell in love with Mary Joyce, but her father, a
prosperous farmer, forbade her to meet him. Subsequently he was gardener
at Burghley Park. He enlisted in the militia, tried camp life with
gipsies, and worked as a lime burner in 1817, but in the following year
he was obliged to accept parish relief. Clare had bought a copy of
Thomson's _Seasons_ out of his scanty earnings and had begun to write
poems. In 1819 a bookseller at Stamford, named Drury, lighted on one of
Clare's poems, _The Setting Sun_, written on a scrap of paper enclosing
a note to his predecessor in the business. He befriended the author and
introduced his poems to the notice of John Taylor, of the publishing
firm of Taylor & Hussey, who issued the _Poems Descriptive of Rural Life
and Scenery_ in 1820. This book was highly praised, and in the next year
his _Village Minstrel and other Poems_ were published. He was greatly
patronized; fame, in the shape of curious visitors, broke the tenor of
his life, and the convivial habits that he had formed were indulged more
freely. He had married in 1820, and an annuity of 15 guineas from Lord
Exeter, in whose service he had been, was supplemented by subscription,
and he became possessed of L45 annually, a sum far beyond what he had
ever earned, but new wants made his income insufficient, and in 1823 he
was nearly penniless. The _Shepherd's Calendar_ (1827) met with little
success, which was not increased by his hawking it himself. As he worked
again on the fields his health temporarily improved; but he soon became
seriously ill. Lord Fitzwilliam presented him with a new cottage and a
piece of ground, but Clare could not settle in his new home. Gradually
his mind gave way. His last and best work, the _Rural Muse_ (1835), was
noticed by "Christopher North" alone. He had for some time shown
symptoms of insanity; and in July 1837 he was removed to a private
asylum, and afterwards to the Northampton general lunatic asylum, where
he died on the 20th of May 1864. Clare's descriptions of rural scenes
sh