Wordsworth denied that the "Lays" were poetry at all; and Leigh Hunt, in a letter asking Macaulay to lend him money, wrote him that he lamented that his "verses wanted the true poetical aroma which breathes from Spenser's Faery Queen." Upon which Macaulay says: "I am much pleased with him for having the spirit to tell me, in a begging letter, how little he likes my poetry."