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 £12 a year." To insist in the financial affairs of Clare may seem blatant, or otiose: actually, the treatment which he underwent was a leading influence in his career. He was grateful enough to Radstock for raising a subscription fund; he may have been grateful to Taylor and Hessey for subscribing £100 of his own money; but what hurt and embittered him was to see this sum and the others invested for him under trustees. Indeed, what man would not, if possessed of any independence of mind, strongly oppose such namby-pamby methods? It is possible to take a more sinister view of Taylor and Hessey and their reluctance ever to provide Clare with a statement of account; but in the matter of Clare's funded property folly alone need be considered.