berty of thus addressing you.

Wishing earnestly that the time may come when the country may perceive
what it has lost by neglecting your advice, and hoping that your latter
days may be attended with health and comfort,

I remain,
With the highest respect and admiration,
Your most obedient and humble servant,
W. WORDSWORTH.[41]

Fox's reply was as follows:

SIR,

I owe you many apologies for having so long deferred thanking you for
your poems, and your obliging letter accompanying them, which I received
early in March. The poems have given me the greatest pleasure; and if I
were obliged to choose out of them, I do not know whether I should not
say that 'Harry Gill,' 'We are Seven,' 'The Mad Mother,' and 'The
Idiot,' are my favourites. I read with particular attention the two you
pointed out; but whether it be from early prepossessions, or whatever
other cause, I am no great friend to blank verse for subjects which are
to be treated of with simplicity.

[41] _Memoirs_, vol. i. pp. 166--171.

You will excuse my stating my opinion to you so freely, which I should
not do if I did not really admire many of the poems in the collection,
and many parts even of those in blank verse. Of the poems which you
state not to be yours, that entitled 'Love' appears to me to be the
best, and I do not know who is the author. 'The Nightingale' I
understand to be Mr. Coleridge's, who combats, I think, very
successfully, the mistaken prejudice of the nightingale's note being
melancholy. I am, with great truth,

Sir,
Your most obedient servant,
C. J. Fox.[42]

St. Ann's Hill, May 25. [1801.]

[42] _Memoirs_, vol. i. pp. 171--2.

* * * * *

In connection with the above the following observations addressed by
Wordsworth to some friends fitly find a place here.

Speaking of the poem of the _Leech-Gatherer_,[43] sent in MS., he says:

'It is not a matter of indifference whether you are pleased with
his figure and employment, it may be comparatively whether you are
pleased with _this Poem_; but it is of the utmost importance that
you should have had pleasure in contemplating the fortitude,
independence, persevering spirit, and the general moral dignity of
this old man's character.'

[43] Entitled 'Resolution and Independence.'

And again, on the same poem:

'I will explain to you, in pros