Samuel Timmins

“ His lectures were the results of long and patient study, and full of acute and subtle criticism. He attracted audiences who never entered a theatre, and stimulated the popular interest in the study of Shakespeare. Without attempted dramatic personation, be was as accomplished a reader as Dickens, and especially skillful in bringing out the comic force of Shakespeare and Molière.
Many of Clarke’s lectures were published,and are very readable, even when deprived of the personal charm of delivery. ”

“ In 1834 Clarke began the great work of his life—the public lectures on Shakespeare and other dramatists and poets. A taste for lectures was arising, and Clarke won great popularity. His lecturing career, which began in 1834, ended in 1856, his first lecture being delivered at the Mechanics' Institute, Royston, on Chaucer, and his farewell lecture at the Mechanics' Institution of Northampton on Molière. He made a number of friends in nearly every provincial town, and lectured for twenty successive years at the London Institution. ”

“ The honeymoon was spent at Enfield. The marriage was exceptionally happy. For some years the Clarkes lived with the Novello family at Craven Hill Cottage, Bayswater, and a year after the marriage Mrs. Cowden Clarke began her invaluable 'Concordance to Shakespeare's Plays,' produced after sixteen years' labour in 1845. Both husband and wife mixed largely in literary society. Clarke was with William Hazlitt shortly before his death in 1830; the acquaintance with Charles Lamb was strengthened by visits to Enfield or Edmonton. ”