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towers are to be found in various stages of preservation at Drumcliffe, Dysert, Kilnby, and Inniscaltra. The cathedral of the diocese of Killaloe, at the town of that name, is a plain massive building originally erected in 1160 ; and near it are the ruins of the mausoleum of Brian Boroihme. Cromlechs are found, chiefly in the limestone rocky district of Burren, though there are some in other baronies. That at Ballygannor is formed of a stone 40 feet long and 10 broad. The celebrated tomb of Conan,

on Mount Callan, is still extant.

CLARE, John (1793-1864), commonly known as " the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet," was the son of a farm labourer, and was born at Helpstone, near Peterborough, on 13th July 1793. At the age of seven he was taken from school to tend sheep and geese ; five years after he wrought on a farm, paying with his own meagre savings for the edu cation he received in the evening. He endeavoured to enter a lawyer s office but failed, studied algebra, and fell in love, became a pot-boy in a public-house, and subsequently was apprenticed to a gardener, from which employment he ran away. Among the neighbours his manners and habits made an unfavourable impression. He enlisted in the militia, tried camp life with gipsies, and wrought as a lime burner in 1817, but the following year he was obliged to accept parish relief. In 1820 appeared his Poems Descrip tive of Rural Life and Scenery, which were very indulgently received, and the year following his Village Minstrel and other Poems were published. He was greatly patronized ; fame, with many curious visitors, broke the tenor of his life, and dangerous habits were formed. From subscriptions he became possessed of 45 annually, a sum far beyond what he had ever earned, but new wants made his income insuf ficient, and in 1823 he was nearly penniless. His next volume, the Shepherds Calendar, 1827, met with little success, which was not increased by his hawking it himself. As he wrought again on the fields his health improved ; but farm operations being unsuccessful he was " as dull as a fog in November," and became seriously unwell. Although a noble patron presented him with a new cottage and a piece of ground, Clare was full of anguish to leave the " old home of homes." The removal to Northborough was his culminating period, and gradually his mind gave way. His last and best work, the Rural Muse, published in 1835, was noticed by " Christopher North " alone. Bursts of insanity followed, of which he had for some time shown symptoms; and in July 1837 he was kept in confinement, and was subsequently lodged in Northampton General Lunatic Asylum, where he died May 20, 1864. The neglect of friends and relatives to visit him, together with the non-success of his later poems, preyed heavily upon his mind. In the asylum he penned his most thrilling poem, beginning " I am ! yet what I am who cares or knows 1 " In its exceeding sadness of thought there is sublime feeling, a strain of divine music in the wail of woe, and the poet longed to

"Sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept Full of high thoughts, unborn. So let me lie, The grass below, above the vaulted sky.*

Clare was one of our most uneducated poets, and sung from the fulness of his heart ; he is one of England s sweetest singers of nature, whose thoughts " gild life s brambles with a flower," and whose songs were gathered from the fields. Many of his sonnets, which display great power of word-painting, are sweet as " sunshine in summer dream." His ballads and love-songs are wild flowers strewn at will, which " art and fashion fling as weeds away," and his Eternity of Nature, and First Love s Recollections display deftness of touch, pastoral beauty, and genuine poetic ability. All his love and genius were showered on beautifying the rural scenes and humble incidents of his surroundings. His poems, drawn with a delicate hand, are those of a keen observer, but they greatly want that vigour which is essential to popularity ; in his own words, " the tide of fashion is a stream too strong for pastoral brooks that gently flow and sing."

See the Life of John Clare by Frederick Martin, 1865, and Life and Remains of John Clare, by J. L. Cherry, 1873, the latter of which, though not so complete, contains some of the poet s asylum verses and prose fragments.

CLARENDON, Edward Hyde, first Earl of (1609- 1674), historian and statesman, born at Dinton in Wiltshire, on the 18th February 1609, was the third son of Henry Hyde, a gentleman belonging to an ancient Cheshire family. The profession first chosen for him was the church ; and consequently, after being educated at home by the vicar of the parish up to the age of thirteen, he was sent to Magdalen College, Oxford. But his oldest brother having died young, the death of his second brother in 1625 left him heir to his father s estate; and the law being now considered a more appropriate profession, he was entered at the Middle Temple by his uncle, Sir Nicholas Hyde, then treasurer of that society. At the age of twenty he married a daughter of Sir George Ayliffe ; but in six months he was left a widower ; and three years later he took as his second wife a daughter of Sir Thomas Aylesbury, Master of Requests.

While yet a young man Hyde had the happiness, as he boasts in his autobiography, of being admitted into the most brilliant literary society of his time. Among poets he knew Ben Jonson, Waller, and Carew ; he was ac quainted with Selden, and with nearly every other scholar of eminence in his day ; and he had a rare opportunity of acquiring, from the conversation of the subtle and impartial Chillingworth and the outspoken but liberal-minded Hales, a breadth of sympathy which unhappily his natural temper and the rough pressure of the times combined to prevent him from ever displaying. The brilliant, tender hearted Falkland also was his most intimate friend. And, fortunately for his professional advancement, besides possessing considerable family influence, he enjoyed the favour of Laud, who, as commissioner of the treasury, regularly consulted him in regard to mercantile affairs.

When, therefore, in April 1640, Hyde took his seat in the Short Parliament as representative of Wootton-Basset, he was already known as a lawyer of mark. During its session of barely three weeks, he made himself prominent as a zealous supporter of the popular party ; and his maiden speech consisted of a vigorous attack upon the Earl Marshal s Court, which had become notorious for the savage manner in which it resented the least affront offered to a man of rank.

In the Long Parliament (in which he sat as member for

Saltash) his zeal for reform was at first in no degree diminished. He effected the final overthrow of the Earl Marshal s Court. He sat as chairman of the committee which collected evidence against the Councils of York and of the Marshes, and of the committee which was appointed to consider the advisability of remodelling the government of the church. He went entirely with the popular party in their condemnation of ship-money ; and it was largely through the earnest speech which Hyde delivered against him that Lord Keeper Finch was driven into exile. When, however, Episcopacy was threatened, and it became apparent that the popular leaders were not to be satisfied with merely temporary reform, but were resolved on gaining a permanent triumph, Hyde, in perfect accordance with both his religious and his political principles, went over to the royalist party. He uttered an open and determined protest against the Grand Remonstrance, and drew up an answer

to it which was adopted and published by the king, and