[alexedwards]

That's not the reason I use Clone() in this pattern. The main reason for the clone operation is convenience. The clone operation is on the already-parsed set of shared templates (base+partials in this example code). It provides the convenience of not having to specify the path to the base template and any paths to the partial templates needed by that page in the call to render().

There may also be a performance benefit too - I suspect that the Clone() operation is cheaper than re-parsing the base and any necessary partial templates in each render() call, but I've never benchmarked it, so I can't assert that with certainty.