And a disturbance of spirit is one of the finest pleasures that a highly-organised man can enjoy.  But this truth can only be really learnt by the repetitions of experience.  As an aid to the more exhaustive examination of your feelings under Wordsworth, in order that you may better understand what he was trying to effect in you, and the means which he employed, I must direct you to Wordsworth himself.  Wordsworth, in addition to being a poet, was unsurpassed as a critic of poetry.  What Hazlitt does for poetry in the way of creating enthusiasm Wordsworth does in the way of philosophic explanation.  And Wordsworth’s explanations of the theory and practice of poetry are written for the plain man.  They pass the comprehension of nobody, and their direct, unassuming, and calm simplicity is extremely persuasive.  Wordsworth’s chief essays in throwing light on himself are the “Advertisement,” “Preface,” and “Appendix” to Lyrical Ballads; the letters to Lady Beaumont and “the Friend” and the “Preface” to the Poems dated 1815.  All this matter is strangely interesting and of immense educational value.  It is the first-class expert talking at ease about his subject.  The essays relating to Lyrical Ballads will be the most useful for you.  You will discover these precious documents in a volume entitled Wordsworth’s Literary Criticism (published by Henry Frowde, 2s. 6d.), edited by that distinguished Wordsworthian Mr. Nowell C. Smith.  It is essential that the student of poetry should become possessed, honestly or dishonestly, either of this volume or of the matter which it contains.  There is, by the way, a volume of Wordsworth’s prose in the Scott Library (1s.).  Those who have not read Wordsworth on poetry can have no idea of the naive charm and the helpful radiance of his expounding.  I feel that I cannot too strongly press Wordsworth’s criticism upon you.

Between Wordsworth and Hazlitt you will learn all that it behoves you to know of the nature, the aims, and the results of poetry.  It is no part of my scheme to dot the “i’s” and cross the “t’s” of Wordsworth and Hazlitt.  I best fulfil my purpose in urgently referring you to them.  I have only a single point of my own to make—­a psychological detail.  One of the main obstacles to the cultivation of poetry in the average sensible man is an absurdly inflated notion of the ridiculous.  At the bottom of that man’s mind is the idea that poetry is “silly.”  He also finds it exaggerated and artificial; but these two accusations against poetry can be satisfactorily answered.  The charge of silliness, of being ridiculous, however, cannot be refuted by argument.  There is no logical answer to a guffaw.  This sense of the ridiculous is merely a bad, infantile habit, in itself grotesquely ridiculous.  You may see it particularly in the theatre.  Not the greatest dramatist, not the greatest composer, not the greatest actor can prevent an audience from laughing uproariously at a tragic moment if a cat walks across the stage.