7th March 1825

Wrote to E. T. Artis—Mrs Gilchrist & Mrs Emmerson—enclosing one in Artis's Letter (to get it Franked) for Mrs W. Wright of Clapham requesting her to give me a bulb of the 'Tyger Lily' & a sucker of the 'White Province Rose'

To Joseph Weston
Helpstone
March 7. 1825

DEAR SIR
In answer to yours of the third I am sorry to say that I posses but little of the corespondence of my departed ' brother bard' what I do posses you are welcome too & as to my letters to him you may do with them just as you please & make of them what use you like I deeply regret that ill health prevented our corespondence & that death prevented us from being better acquainted I sincerely loved the man & admired his Genius & had a strong anxiety to make a Journey to spend a day with him on my second visit to London & 1 intended to have stopped at Biggleswade on my return, home for that purpose but my purse got too near the bottonl for a Stoppage on the road & as it was too great a distance to walk home this with other matters prevented me from seeing him as one of my family was very ill at the same time & hastened my return—

Whatever cause his friends may have to regret the death of the Poet—Fame is not one of then! for he dyed ripe for immor¬tality & had he written nothing else but 'Richard & Kate' that fine picture of Rural Life were sufficient to establish his name as the English Theocritus & the first of Rural Bards in this country & is Fashion (that feeble substitute for Fame) had nothing to do with his .exaltation its neglect will have nothing to affect his memory, it is built on a more solid foundation & time £one line heavily scored out]] will bring its own reward to the 'Farmers Boy,—I beg you will have the kindness to take care of the M.S. & return it when you have done with it as I wish to preserve a scrap of his handwriting—The Copy on the other side is a note which accompanied his present of' Mayday with the Muses' I gave the original to Allan Cunningham the Poet who has a high respect for Bloomfield's genius & whose request on that account (to posses a scrap of his writing) I was proud & happy to gratify—soon after the Poet's death I wrote ' in a mellancholy feeling 3 Sonnets to his memory I was not aware that his "Remains' woud have had such insertions or I shoud have sent them to his da'ughter-—I shall fill this sheet with them for your perusal tho I expect they will come out in the volume now in the press that will be published this Spring: with my best wishes that your kindly labours for the memory of the departed Poet may meet with the success it deserves I remain
Yours very faithfully
JOHN CLARE