19 JANUARY 1968, Page 28

Amorous prawn

Sir: It is true that, as David Williams writes (12 January), 'Not unprofound, not ungrand, not un- moving—but unpoetical' is a 'comment' of Matthew Arnold, but not a comment on Clough. It is how, in a letter to Clough, he described 'the age and all one's 'surroundings.' What he does say, in the same letter, about Clough's poems (those in Ambarvalia) is that 'they are not natural.'