ABSTRACT
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 my early prepossessions, or whatever other cause, I am no great friend to blank verse for subjects which are to be treated of with simplicity. You will excuse my stating to you my opinion 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 these 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,
