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. But why ruin the scene by laughter?
Simply because the majority of any audience is artistically childish.
This sense of the ridiculous can only be crushed by the exercise of
moral force. It can only be cowed. If you are inclined to laugh when a
poet expresses himself more powerfully than you express yourself, when
a poet talks about feelings which are not usually mentioned in daily
papers, when a poet uses words and images which lie outside your
vocabulary and range of thought, then you had better take yourself in
hand. 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, naïve, 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