SOURCE: “John Clare and the Tyranny of Grammar,” in Studies in Romanticism, Vol. 33, No. 2, Summer, 1994, pp. 255-77.

In the following essay, McKusick explores what John Taylor referred to as Clare's “evident ignorance of grammar” and its effect on his poetry and its critical reception.

John Clare has traditionally been regarded, rather patronizingly, as an uneducated Peasant Poet, exhibiting remarkable talent in minor poetic genres, but remaining something of a naif in matters of linguistic scholarship. Certainly it is true that Clare had little formal schooling and was almost completely without knowledge of Latin or Greek, the “learned languages” that still constituted the distinctive badge of an educated gentleman in his day. Even his command of English was distinctly provincial and marked by frequent departures from the normative standard of educated Londoners. Clare's first biographer, Frederick Martin, alleged that “he entirely failed in learning grammar and spelling, remaining ignorant...