Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“makes the reading of Wordsworth an excellent sort of training towards the things of art and poetry.”
- Date
- 1889
Meaning of “makes the reading of Wordsworth an excellent sort…”
Pater presents sustained engagement with a difficult poet as a form of aesthetic training, implying that taste and discrimination can be developed through repeated attentive reading.
Where does it come from?
Appreciations, with an Essay on Style, essay “Wordsworth,” printed page 41 in the Macmillan 1910 Library Edition pagination reproduced by Project Gutenberg #4037. Pater says that the contrast between Wordsworth’s higher and lower poetic moods “makes the reading of Wordsworth an excellent sort of training towards the things of art and poetry.” This remains Pater’s critical judgment about aesthetic training, not an experimentally established educational outcome.
