John Clare

1824: Found a very beautiful fern in Oxey Wood suppose it the white maidenhair of Hill it is very scarce here

1824: One of the largest floods ever known is out now an old neighbour Sam Sharp out last night at Deeping Gate on attempting to get home was drownd

will thin the myriad worse than a plague

1824: An excessive wet day read the Literary Souvenier for 1825 in all its gilt & finery what a number of candidates for fame are smiling on its pages what a pity it is that time shoud be such a destroyer of our hopes & anxietys for the best of us are but doubts on fames promises & a century...

1824: Lent Henderson 5 Nos, of London Mag. from July to November & The Human Heart

fetch he said that Bloomfield had not a £100 a year to maintain 5 or 6 in the family why I have not £50 to maintain 8 with This is a hungry difference

will never print them but will dally you on with well-managed excuses to the grave & then boast that they were your friends when you are not able to contradict it as they have done to Bloomfield' he then desired me to get my MSS. back by all means & sell them at a market-price at what they woud...

1824: A gentleman came to see me today whose whole talk was of Bloomfield & Booksellers he told me to put no faith in them & when I told him that all my faith & MSS. likewise was in their hands already he shook his head & declared with a solemn bend of his body 'Then you are done by God They...

of lilac & 2 others - I love these flowers as they come in the melancholy of nature

1824: Recievd a parcel of Ferns & flowers from Henderson the common polipody growing about the Thorp Park wall the harts tongue growing in a well at Caistor the Lady fern growing at Whittlesea Meer & tall White Lychnis with 7 new sorts of Chrysanthemums - the Paper White the bright lemon 3 sorts...

Inclosure has left it desolate its companion of oak & ash being gone

1824: Went to see if the old hazel nut tree in Lea Close was cut down & found it still standing it is the largest hazel tree I ever saw being thicker then ones thigh in the trunk & the height of a moderate Ash - I once got a half peck of nuts when in the leaves of its branchs when a boy - the...

of the second edition of the Minstrel they were a 12month in printing a title-page.

1824: Recievd a letter from Hessey I have not answerd his last & know not when I shall the worlds friendships are counterfeits & forgeries on that principle I have provd it & my affections are sickened unto death my memories are broken while my confidence is grown to a shadow in the bringing out...

his stick & saw my fathers uncle set them carrying a score on his back at once I can scarcely believe it.

1824: I have often been struck with astonishment at the tales old men & women relate in their remembrances of the growth of trees the elm grooves in the Staves Acre Close at the town-end were the rooks build & that are of giant height my old friend Billings says he remembers them no thicker than...

ink shed I never saw some of them

1824: Some months back I began a system of profiting by my reading at least to make a show of it by noting down beautiful odd or remarkable passages - immitations in the poets & prosewriters which I read & I have inserted some likenesses of Lord Byrons about which there has been much nattering &...

smiling at my young fancys in those days of happy ignorance.

1824: Lookd into Miltons Paradise Lost I once read it through when I was a boy at that time I liked the Death of Abel better what odd judgments those of boys are how they change as they ripen when I think of the slender merits of the Death of Abel against such a giant as Milton I cannot help...

pocket for my friend Artis there is some rabbits hants it & the earth they root out of their burrows is full of this cement & perishd stone - part of the moat is still open

were about a foot of the wall may be seen it is coverd within & without with blackthorn & privit & spurge laurel so that it is difficult to get about to view it I broke some of the cement off. that holds the stones together & it appears harder then the stones itself brought some home in my...

1824: Paid a second visit to the old castle in Ashton Lawn with my companion Billings to examine it - we strum it & found it 20 yards long fronting the south & 18 fronting eastward we imagind about 12 foot of the walls still standing tho the rubbish has entirely coverd them except in some places...

the 8th chapter of my life.

1824: Went out to hunt the harts tongue species of fern & fell in with the ruins of the old castle in Ashton Lawn but found none its commonest place is in Wells in the crevices of the walls but I have found it growing about the badger-holes in Open Copy Wood got very wet & returnd home finishd...

or more natives of England & Scotland one of the finest of the latter is calld the maidenhair growing in rock-clefts

1824: Had a visit from my friend Henderson & I felt revivd as I was very dull before he had pleasing News to deliver me having discoverd a new species of Fern a few days back growing among the bogs on Whittlesea Mere & our talk was of Ferns for the day he tells me there is 24 different species...

author & his piety as a Christian I sincerely wish that the present day coud find such a man.

1824: Read in Southeys Wesley he has made a very entertaining book of it but considering the subject I think he might have made more of it the character of Wesley is one of the finest I have read of they may speak of him as they please but they cannot diminish his simplicity of genius as an...

before the summer multitude & after their departure the tall hollyhock & little aster bloom in their showy colors then comes the michaelmas daisey & lastly the chrsanthemum while the China rosesall the year Or in thebud or in the bloom appear.