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 prose, my feelings in writing that poem....  I describe myself as having been exalted to the highest pitch of delight by the joyousness and beauty of Nature; and then as depressed, even in the midst of those beautiful objects, to the lowest dejection and despair.  A young poet in the midst of the happiness of Nature is described as overwhelmed by the thoughts of the miserable reverses which have befallen the happiest of all men, viz. poets.  I think of this till I am so deeply impressed with it, that I consider the manner in which I was rescued from my dejection and despair almost as an interposition of Providence.  A person reading the poem with feelings like mine will have been awed and controlled, expecting something spiritual or supernatural.  What is brought forward?