of 1821, he spent six months in the most energetic literary labour.
Writing several poems a day as he roamed the field or sat in Lea
Close Oak, he would sit till late in the night sifting, recasting and
transcribing. His library, by his own enterprise and by presents from
many friends, was greatly enlarged, and he already knew not only the
literature of the past, but also that of the present. In his letters
to Taylor are mentioned his appreciations of Keats, "Poor Keats, you
know how I reverence him," Shelley, Hunt, Lamb--and almost every
other contemporary classic. Nor was he afraid to criticize Scott with
freedom in a letter to Scott's friend Sherwell: remarking also that
Wordworth's Sonnet on Westminster Bridge had no equal in the language,
but disagreeing with "his affected godliness."

Taylor and Hessey for their part did not seem over-anxious to produce
the new volume of poems, perhaps because Clare would not allow any
change except in the jots and tittles of his work, perhaps thinking
that the public had had a surfeit of sensation. At length in the
autumn of 1821 the "Village Minstrel" made its appearance, in
two volumes costing twelve shillings; with the bait of steel
engravings,--the first, an unusually fine likeness of Clare from
the painting by Hilton; the second, an imaginative study of Clare's
cottage, not without representation of the Blue Bell, the village
cross and the church. The book was reviewed less noisily, and a sale
of a mere 800 copies in two months was regarded as "a very modified
success." Meanwhile, Clare was writing for the _London Magazine_, and
Cherry tells us that "as he contributed almost regularly for some
time, a substantial addition was made to his income." Clare tells us,
in a note on a cash account dated 1827, "In this cash account there
is nothing allowed me for my three years' writing for the _London
Magazine_. I was to have L12 a year."