Novels are excluded from "serious reading," so that the man who, bent on self-improvement, has been deciding to devote ninety minutes three times a week to a complete study of the works of Charles Dickens will be well advised to alter his plans. The reason is that bad novels ought not to be read, and that good novels never demand any appreciable mental application on the part of the reader. A good novel rushes you forward like a skiff1 down a stream, and you arrive at the end, perhaps breathless, but unexhausted. The best novels involve the least strain. Now in the cultivation of the mind one of the most important factors is precisely the feeling of strain, of difficulty, of a task which one part of you is anxious to achieve and another part of you is anxious to shirk; and that feeling cannot be got in facing a novel. Therefore, though you should read novels, you should not read them in those ninety minutes.

Question

Imaginative poetry produces a far greater mental strain than novels. It produces probably the severest strain of any form of literature. It is the highest form of literature as it yields the highest form of pleasure, and teaches the highest form of wisdom. In a word, there is nothing to compare with it. I say this with sad consciousness of the fact that the majority of people do not read poetry.
I will never cease advising my friends to read poetry before anything.
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."

1. a small rowing boat
7
A good novel is contrasted with
A.
essays written by Hazlitt
B.
a skiff moving down a stream
C.
novels written by Charles Dickens
D.
imaginative poetry

Answer 1

The correct answer is D. imaginative poetry.

The passage contrasts the experience of reading good novels with the experience of reading poetry, highlighting that novels do not produce the same level of mental strain and intellectual engagement as poetry does.