If poetry is what is called “a sealed book” to you, begin by reading Hazlitt’s famous essay on the nature of “poetry in general.”  It is the best thing of its kind in English, and no one who has read it can possibly be under the misapprehension that poetry is a mediaeval torture, or a mad elephant, or a gun that will go off by itself and kill at forty paces.  Indeed, it is difficult to imagine the mental state of the man who, after reading Hazlitt’s essay, is not urgently desirous of reading some poetry before his next meal.  If the essay so inspires you I would suggest that you make a commencement with purely narrative poetry.

There is an infinitely finer English novel, written by a woman, than anything by George Eliot or the Brontes, or even Jane Austen, which perhaps you have not read.  Its title is “Aurora Leigh,” and its author E.B.  Browning.  It happens to be written in verse, and to contain a considerable amount of genuinely fine poetry.  Decide to read that book through, even if you die for it.  Forget that it is fine poetry.  Read it simply for the story and the social ideas.  And when you have done, ask yourself honestly whether you still dislike poetry.  I have known more than one person to whom “Aurora Leigh” has been the means of proving that in assuming they hated poetry they were entirely mistaken.

Of course, if, after Hazlitt, and such an experiment made in the light of Hazlitt, you are finally assured that there is something in you which is antagonistic to poetry, you must be content with history or philosophy.  I shall regret it, yet not inconsolably.  “The Decline and Fall” is not to be named in the same day with “Paradise Lost,” but it is a vastly pretty thing; and Herbert Spencer’s “First Principles” simply laughs at the claims of poetry and refuses to be accepted as aught but the most majestic product of any human mind.  I do not suggest that either of these works is suitable for a tyro in mental strains.  But I see no reason why any man of average intelligence should not, after a year of continuous reading, be fit to assault the supreme masterpieces of history or philosophy.  The great convenience of masterpieces is that they are so astonishingly lucid.

I suggest no particular work as a start.  The attempt would be futile in the space of my command.  But I have two general suggestions of a certain importance.  The first is to define the direction and scope of your efforts.  Choose a limited period, or a limited subject, or a single author.  Say to yourself:  “I will know something about the French Revolution, or the rise of railways, or the works of John Keats.”  And during a given period, to be settled beforehand, confine yourself to your choice.  There is much pleasure to be derived from being a specialist.

The second suggestion is to think as well as to read.  I know people who read and read, and for all the good it does them they might just as well cut bread-and-butter.  They take to reading as better men take to drink.  They fly through the shires of literature on a motor-car, their sole object being motion.  They will tell you how many books they have read in a year.