Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“a habit of reading between the lines, a faith in the effect of concentration and collectedness of mind in the right appreciation of poetry”
- Date
- 1889
Meaning of “a habit of reading between the lines, a…”
Pater describes demanding reading as training in concentration and inference, where appreciation grows through disciplined attention instead of quick surface consumption.
Where does it come from?
Appreciations, with an Essay on Style, essay “Wordsworth,” printed page 42 in the Macmillan 1910 Library Edition pagination reproduced by Project Gutenberg #4037. The reading-between-the-lines passage follows Pater’s claim that Wordsworth-reading can train aesthetic discrimination; he attributes to receptive readers a habit of inference plus faith in concentration and collectedness of mind. This remains nineteenth-century literary criticism rather than cognitive-science evidence.
