John Birtwhistle

“The essay was impelled by Clare's anxiety that his poems were slipping out of fashion.”

“A minor essay, but an unduly neglected document of Clare's predicament in 1824, a crucial year in his life as a poet.”

“Clare's essay was itself an attempt at popularity through essayistic journalism.”

“There are many thousands of poems about Death in the abstract. Philosophy about Death is a typical way of rendering it less real as an experience.”