ABSTRACT
Of all those whose genius has struggled to light through the disadvantages of humble fortune, there have been few who, however they may have begun, can, in the end, justly be called peasant-poets—few, in whose verses, as they advance in life, traces of cultivation and book-learning do not increasingly appear either in the enlargement of the circle of their subjects, or their improved use of language and allusion. This change is natural and delightful to witness, when it does not involve the loss of that simple freshness of spirit, which is the peculiar and compensating gift of those born under such circumstances; it gladdens us to watch one fertilizing influence after another enriching a mind of high natural endowments—to observe experience and knowledge adding to, without alloying, the rich native ore: but there is also to us something unspeakably pleasant, in these days of pretence, to light upon some lowly but not mean-minded singer, who, in his own retired corner of the world, continues to pour out the thoughts which rural life awakens, in a strain full, it may be, of delicate observation, but as artless and unworldly as that which he first spontaneously uttered on hedgerow stile, or in the loneliness of green meadows. Such a one was Bloomfield—such a one is John Clare: in fact, the verses he addresses to his predecessor might be not unaptly applied to himself.
