In reading poetry, though we may not always understand every word
of it, we want to feel the thrill and glamour of it. And when
Wordsworth remembers his own rules and keeps to them there is no
glamour, and his simplicity is apt to seem to us mere silliness.
When we are very young we cannot walk alone, and are glad of a
kindly helping hand to guide our footsteps. In learning to read,
as in learning to walk, it is at first well to trust to a guiding
hand. And in learning to read poetry it is at first well to use
selections chosen for us by those wiser than ourselves. Later,
when we can go alone, we take a man's whole work, and choose for
ourselves what we will most love in it. And it is only by making
use of this power of choice that we can really enjoy what is
best. But of all our great writers Wordsworth is perhaps the
last in the reading of whose works we willingly go alone. He is
perhaps the writer who gains most by being read in selections.
Indeed, for some of us there never comes a time when we care to
read his whole works.
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