should live the life of an oak-tree or a sturdy elm, that groans in a storm, but only for pleasure. Do you meditate too much or sit too immovably? Poetry, I mean the composition of it, does not always sweeten the mind as much as the reading of it. There is always an anxiety, a fervour, an impatience, a vaingloriousness attending it which untranquillizes even in the sweetest-seeming moods of the poet. Like the bee, he is restless and uneasy even in collecting his sweets. Farewell, my dear Clare, and when you have leisure and inclination, write to me again. Sincerely yours, GEORGE DARLEY." "London, 5 Upper Eaton Street, Grosvenor Place, March 14th, 1829. My dear Clare,-- You have been reproaching me, I dare say, for my long neglect of your last letter, but you might have saved yourself that trouble, as my own conscience has scourged me repeatedly these two months about it. The truth is I have been a good deal harassed in several ways, and now sit down, in the midst of a headache, to write, when I can hardly tell which end of my pen is paper-wards. I will attempt, however, to return your questions legible if not intelligible answers. There have been so many 'Pleasures' of so-and-so that I should almost counsel you against baptizing your poem on Spring the 'Pleasures' of anything. Besides, when a poem is so designated it is almost assuredly prejudged as deficient in action (about which you appear solicitous). 'The Pleasures of Spring' from you, identified as you are with descriptive poesy, would almost without doubt sound in the public ear as an announcement of a series of literary scene paintings. Beautiful as these may be, and certainly would be from your pencil, there is a deadness about them which tends to chill the reader: he must be animated with something of a livelier prospect, or, as Hamlet says of Polonius, 'he sleeps'. It may be affirmed without hesitation that, however independent of description a drama may be, no descriptive poem is independent of something like dramatic spirit to give it interest with human beings. How dull a thing would even the great descriptive poem of the Creation be without Adam and Eve, their history and hapless fall, to enliven it! But I cannot see why you should not infuse a dramatic spirit into your poem on Spring, which is only the development of the living principle in Nature. See how full of life those descriptive scenes in the 'Midsummer Night's Dream' and the 'Winter's Tale' are. Characters may describe the beauties or qualities of Spring just as well as the author, and nothing prevents a story going through the season, so as to gather up flowers and point out every beautiful feature in the landscape on its way. Thomson has a little of this, but not enough. Imagine his 'Lavinia' spread out into a longer story, incidents and descriptions perpetually relieving each other! Imagine this, and you have a model for your poem. Allan Ramsay's 'Gentle Shepherd' would be still