You have to decide whether you will be on the side of the angels
or on the side of the nincompoops. There is no surer sign of imperfect
development than the impulse to snigger at what is unusual, naive, or
exuberant. And if you choose to do so, you can detect the cat walking
across the stage in the sublimest passages of literature. But more
advanced souls will grieve for you.
The study of Wordsworth's criticism makes the seventh step in my
course of treatment. The eighth is to return to those poems of
Wordsworth's which you have already perused, and read them again in
the full light of the author's defence and explanation. Read as much
Wordsworth as you find you can assimilate, but do not attempt either
of his long poems. The time, however, is now come for a long poem.
I began by advising narrative poetry for the neophyte, and I shall
persevere with the prescription. I mean narrative poetry in the
restricted sense; for epic poetry is narrative. _Paradise Lost_ is
narrative; so is _The Prelude_. I suggest neither of these great
works. My choice falls on Elizabeth Browning's _Aurora Leigh_. If you
once work yourself "into" this poem, interesting yourself primarily
(as with Wordsworth) in the events of the story, and not allowing
yourself to be obsessed by the fact that what you are reading is
"poetry"--if you do this, you are not likely to leave it unfinished.
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