John Clare and George Darley on action in poetry

Clare told Taylor at the end of December 1828 that he was at work on a new poem, ‘The Pleasures of Spring’. Taylor had his reservations; Clare replied on 3 January 1829. The poem was not published in Clare’s lifetime, but it is included in W.K.Richmond, Poetry and the People, 1947, PP. 230–42 (see No. 139). George Darley (1795–1846), poet and mathematician, seems to have agreed with Taylor over the shortcomings of the poem.