The book passed to
a second edition in 1802, and to a third in 1805.[338] Wordsworth sent a
copy of it, with a manly letter, to Mr. Fox, particularly recommending to
his attention the poems "Michael" and "The Brothers," as displaying the
strength and permanence among a simple and rural population of those
domestic affections which were certain to decay gradually under the
influence of manufactories and poor houses. Mr. Fox wrote a civil
acknowledgment, saying that his favorites among the poems were "Harry
Gill," "We are Seven," "The Mad Mother," and "The Idiot," but that he was
prepossessed against the use of blank verse for simple subjects. Any
political significance in the poems he was apparently unable to see. To
this second edition Wordsworth prefixed an argumentative Preface, in
which he nailed to the door of the cathedral of English song the critical
theses which he was to maintain against all comers in his poetry and his
life. It was a new thing for an author to undertake to show the goodness
of his verses by the logic and learning of his prose; but Wordsworth
carried to the reform of poetry all that fervor and faith which had lost
their political object, and it is another proof of the sincerity and
greatness of his mind, and of that heroic simplicity which is their
concomitant, that he could do so calmly what was sure to seem ludicrous
to the greater number of his readers.
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