Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde

Published：2026-07-31 09:27:14 Source: kids pottery kits for 2 year olds under 100 dollars Author: Dress Up

Transcribed from the 1914 Methuen and best robot building kits for 9 year olds under 100 dollarsCo. edition by David Price,email [email protected]

SELECTED PROSE OF OSCAR WILDE

Contents:

Preface by Robert Ross
How They Struck a Contemporary
The Quality of George Meredith
Life in the Fallacious Model
Life the Disciple
Life the Plagiarist
The Indispensable East
The Influence of the Impressionists on Climate
An Exposure to Naturalism
Thomas Griffiths Wainewright
Wainewright at Hobart Town
Cardinal Newman and the Autobiographers
Robert Browning
The Two Supreme and Highest Arts
The Secrets of Immortality
The Critic and his Material
Dante the Living Guide
The Limitations of Genius
Wanted A New Background
Without Frontiers
The Poetry of Archæology
The Art of Archæology
Herod Suppliant
The Tetrarch’s Remorse
The Tetrarch’s Treasure
Salomé anticipates Dr. Strauss
The Young King
A Coronation
The King of Spain
A Bull Fight
The Throne Room
A Protected Country
The Blackmailing of the Emperor
Covent Garden
A Letter from Miss Jane Percy to her Aunt
The Triumph of American ‘Humor’
The Garden of Death
An Eton Kit-cat
Mrs. Erlynne Exercises the Prerogative of a Grandmother
Motherhood more than Marriage
The Damnable Ideal
From a Rejected Prize-essay
The Possibilities of the Useful
The Artist
The Doer of Good
The Disciple
The Master
The House of Judgment
The Teacher of Wisdom
Wilde gives directions about ‘De Profundis’
Carey Street
Sorrow wears no mask
Vita Nuova
The Grand Romantic
Clapham Junction
The Broken Resolution
Domesticity at Berneval
A visit to the Pope

DEDICATION

This anthology is dedicated to Michael Lykiardopulos as a littletoken of his services to English Literature in the great Russian Empire.

PREFACE

With the possible exceptions of the Greek Anthology, the “GoldenTreasury” and those which bear the name of E. V. Lucas, no selectionsof poetry or prose have ever given complete satisfaction to anyone exceptthe compiler.  But critics derive great satisfaction from pointingout errors of omission and inclusion on the part of the anthologist,and all of us have putatively re-arranged and re-edited even the “GoldenTreasury” in our leisure moments.  In an age when “Artfor Art’s sake” is an exploded doctrine, anthologies, likeeverything else, must have a purpose.  The purpose or object ofthe present volume is to afford admirers of Wilde’s work the sameinnocent pleasure obtainable from similar compilations, namely thatof reconstructing a selection of their own in their mind’s eye—forcopyright considerations would interfere with the materialisation oftheir dream.

A stray observation in an esteemed weekly periodical determined theplan of this anthology and the choice of particular passages. The writer, whose name has escaped me, opined that the reason the worksof Pater and Wilde were no longer read was owing to both authors havingtreated English as a dead language.  By a singular coincidenceI had purchased simultaneously with the newspaper a shilling copy ofPater’s “Renaissance,” published by Messrs. Macmillan;and a few days afterwards Messrs. Methuen issued at a shilling the twenty-eighthedition of “De Profundis.”  Obviously either Messrs.Macmillan and Messrs. Methuen or the authority on dead languages musthave been suffering from hallucinations.  It occurred to me thata selection of Wilde’s prose might at least rehabilitate the notoriousreputation for common sense enjoyed by all publishers, who rarely issueshilling editions of deceased authors for mere æsthetic considerations. And I confess to a hope that this volume may reach the eye or ear ofthose who have not read Wilde’s books, or of those, such as Mr.Sydney Grundy, who are irritated by the revival of his plays and thepraise accorded to his works throughout the Continent.

Wilde’s prose is distinguished by its extraordinary ease andclarity, and by the absence—very singular in his case—ofthe preciosity which he admired too much in other writers, and advocatedwith over-emphasis.  Perhaps that is why many of his stories andessays and plays are used as English text-books in Russian and Scandinavianand Hungarian schools.  Artifice and affectation, often assumedto be recurrent defects in his writings by those unacquainted with them,are comparatively rare.  Wilde once boasted in an interview thatonly Flaubert, Pater, Keats, and Maeterlinck had influenced him, andthen added in a characteristic way: “But I had already gone morethan half-way to meet them.”  Anyone curious as to the originof Wilde’s style and development should consult the learned treatise{ 1} of Dr. Ernst Bendz,whose comprehensive treatment of the subject renders any elucidationof mine superfluous; while nothing can be added to Mr. Holbrook Jackson’smasterly criticism { 2}of Wilde and his position in literature.

In making this selection, with the valuable assistance of Mr. StuartMason, I have endeavoured to illustrate and to justify the criticalappreciations of both Dr. Bendz and Mr. Holbrook Jackson, as well asto afford the general reader a fair idea of Wilde’s variety asa prose writer.  He is more various than almost any author of thelast century, though the act of writing was always a burden to him. Some critic acutely pointed out that poetry and prose were almost side-issuesfor him.  The resulting faults and weakness of what he left areobvious.  Except in the plays he has no sustained scheme of thought. Even “De Profundis” is too desultory.

For the purpose of convenient reference I have exercised the prerogativeof a literary executor and editor by endowing with special titles someof the pieces quoted in these pages.  Though unlike one of Wilde’sother friends I cannot claim to have collaborated with him or to haveassisted him in any of his plays, I was sometimes permitted, as Wildeacknowledges in different letters, to act in the capacity of godfatherby suggesting the actual titles by which some of his books are knownto the world.  I mention the circumstance only as a precedent formy present temerity.  To compensate those who disapprove of mychoice, I have included two unpublished letters.  The examplesof Wilde’s epistolary style, published since his death, have beengenerally associated with disagreeable subjects.  Those includedhere will, I hope, prove a pleasant contrast.

ROBERT ROSS

HOW THEY STRUCK A CONTEMPORARY

There is such a thing as robbing a story of its reality by tryingto make it too true, and The Black Arrowis so inartistic asnot to contain a single anachronism to boast of, while the transformationof Dr. Jekyll reads dangerously like an experiment out of the Lancet. As for Mr. Rider Haggard, who really has, or had once, the makings ofa perfectly magnificent liar, he is now so afraid of being suspectedof genius that when he does tell us anything marvellous, he feels boundto invent a personal reminiscence, and to put it into a footnote asa kind of cowardly corroboration.  Nor are our other novelistsmuch better.  Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painfulduty, and wastes upon mean motives and imperceptible ‘points ofview’ his neat literary style, his felicitous phrases, his swiftand caustic satire.  Mr. Hall Caine, it is true, aims at the grandiose,but then he writes at the top of his voice.  He is so loud thatone cannot bear what he says.  Mr. James Payn is an adept in theart of concealing what is not worth finding.  He hunts down theobvious with the enthusiasm of a short-sighted detective.  As oneturns over the pages, the suspense of the author becomes almost unbearable. The horses of Mr. William Black’s phaeton do not soar towardsthe sun.  They merely frighten the sky at evening into violentchromolithographic effects.  On seeing them approach, the peasantstake refuge in dialect.  Mrs. Oliphant prattles pleasantly aboutcurates, lawn-tennis parties, domesticity, and other wearisome things. Mr. Marion Crawford has immolated himself upon the altar of local colour. He is like the lady in the French comedy who keeps talking about “lebeau ciel d’Italie.”  Besides, he has fallen into thebad habit of uttering moral platitudes.  He is always telling usthat to be good is to be good, and that to be bad is to be wicked. At times he is almost edifying.  Robert Elsmereis of coursea masterpiece—a masterpiece of the “genre ennuyeux,”the one form of literature that the English people seems thoroughlyto enjoy.  A thoughtful young friend of ours once told us thatit reminded him of the sort of conversation that goes on at a meat teain the house of a serious Nonconformist family, and we can quite believeit.  Indeed it is only in England that such a book could be produced. England is the home of lost ideas.  As for that great and dailyincreasing school of novelists for whom the sun always rises in theEast-End, the only thing that can be said about them is that they findlife crude, and leave it raw.—The Decay of Lying.

THE QUALITY OF GEORGE MEREDITH

Ah!  Meredith!  Who can define him?  His style ischaos illumined by flashes of lightning.  As a writer he has masteredeverything except language: as a novelist he can do everything, excepttell a story: as an artist he is everything except articulate. Somebody in Shakespeare—Touchstone, I think—talks abouta man who is always breaking his shins over his own wit, and it seemsto me that this might serve as the basis for a criticism of Meredith’smethod.  But whatever he is, he is not a realist.  Or ratherI would say that he is a child of realism who is not on speaking termswith his father.  By deliberate choice he has made himself a romanticist. He has refused to bow the knee to Baal, and after all, even if the man’sfine spirit did not revolt against the noisy assertions of realism,his style would be quite sufficient of itself to keep life at a respectfuldistance.  By its means he has planted round his garden a hedgefull of thorns, and red with wonderful roses.  As for Balzac, hewas a most remarkable combination of the artistic temperament with thescientific spirit.  The latter he bequeathed to his disciples. The former was entirely his own.  The difference between such abook as M. Zola’s L’Assommoirand Balzac’sIllusions Perduesis the difference between unimaginative realismand imaginative reality.  ‘All Balzac’s characters;’said Baudelaire, ‘are gifted with the same ardour of life thatanimated himself.  All his fictions are as deeply coloured as dreams. Each mind is a weapon loaded to the muzzle with will.  The veryscullions have genius.’  A steady course of Balzac reducesour living friends to shadows, and our acquaintances to the shadowsof shades.  His characters have a kind of fervent fiery-colouredexistence.  They dominate us, and defy scepticism.  One ofthe greatest tragedies of my life is the death of Lucien de Rubempré. It is a grief from which I have never been able completely to rid myself. It haunts me in my moments of pleasure.  I remember it when I laugh. But Balzac is no more a realist than Holbein was.  He created life,he did not copy it.  I admit, however, that he set far too higha value on modernity of form, and that, consequently, there is no bookof his that, as an artistic masterpiece, can rank with Salammbôor Esmond, or The Cloister and the Hearth, or the Vicomtede Bragelonne.—The Decay of Lying.

LIFE THE FALLACIOUS MODEL

Art begins with abstract decoration, with purely imaginative andpleasurable work dealing with what is unreal and non-existent. This is the first stage.  Then Life becomes fascinated with thisnew wonder, and asks to be admitted into the charmed circle.  Arttakes life as part of her rough material, recreates it, and refashionsit in fresh forms, is absolutely indifferent to fact, invents, imagines,dreams, and keeps between herself and reality the impenetrable barrierof beautiful style, of decorative or ideal treatment.  The thirdstage is when Life gets the upper hand, and drives Art out into thewilderness.  That is the true decadence, and it is from this thatwe are now suffering.

Take the case of the English drama.  At first in the hands ofthe monks Dramatic Art was abstract, decorative and mythological. Then she enlisted Life in her service, and using some of life’sexternal forms, she created an entirely new race of beings, whose sorrowswere more terrible than any sorrow man has ever felt, whose joys werekeener than lover’s joys, who had the rage of the Titans and thecalm of the gods, who had monstrous and marvellous sins, monstrous andmarvellous virtues.  To them she gave a language different fromthat of actual use, a language full of resonant music and sweet rhythm,made stately by solemn cadence, or made delicate by fanciful rhyme,jewelled with wonderful words, and enriched with lofty diction. She clothed her children in strange raiment and gave them masks, andat her bidding the antique world rose from its marble tomb.  Anew Cæsar stalked through the streets of risen Rome, and withpurple sail and flute-led oars another Cleopatra passed up the riverto Antioch.  Old myth and legend and dream took shape and substance. History was entirely re-written, and there was hardly one of the dramatistswho did not recognise that the object of Art is not simple truth butcomplex beauty.  In this they were perfectly right.  Art itselfis really a form of exaggeration; and selection, which is the very spiritof art, is nothing more than an intensified mode of over-emphasis.

But Life soon shattered the perfection of the form.  Even inShakespeare we can see the beginning of the end.  It shows itselfby the gradual breaking-up of the blank-verse in the later plays, bythe predominance given to prose, and by the over-importance assignedto characterisation.  The passages in Shakespeare—and theyare many—where the language is uncouth, vulgar, exaggerated, fantastic,obscene even, are entirely due to Life calling for an echo of her ownvoice, and rejecting the intervention of beautiful style, through whichalone should life be suffered to find expression.  Shakespeareis not by any means a flawless artist.  He is too fond of goingdirectly to life, and borrowing life’s natural utterance. He forgets that when Art surrenders her imaginative medium she surrenderseverything.—The Decay of Lying.

LIFE THE DISCIPLE

We have all seen in our own day in England how a certain curiousand fascinating type of beauty, invented and emphasised by two imaginativepainters, has so influenced Life that whenever one goes to a privateview or to an artistic salon one sees, here the mystic eyes of Rossetti’sdream, the long ivory throat, the strange square-cut jaw, the loosenedshadowy hair that he so ardently loved, there the sweet maidenhood of‘The Golden Stair,’ the blossom-like mouth and weary lovelinessof the ‘Laus Amoris,’ the passion-pale face of Andromeda,the thin hands and lithe beauty of the Vivian in ‘Merlin’sDream.’  And it has always been so.  A great artistinvents a type, and Life tries to copy it, to reproduce it in a popularform, like an enterprising publisher.  Neither Holbein nor Vandyckfound in England what they have given us.  They brought their typeswith them, and Life with her keen imitative faculty set herself to supplythe master with models.  The Greeks, with their quick artisticinstinct, understood this, and set in the bride’s chamber thestatue of Hermes or of Apollo, that she might bear children as lovelyas the works of art that she looked at in her rapture or her pain. They knew that Life gains from art not merely spirituality, depth ofthought and feeling, soul-turmoil or soul-peace, but that she can formherself on the very lines and colours of art, and can reproduce thedignity of Pheidias as well as the grace of Praxiteles.  Hencecame their objection to realism.  They disliked it on purely socialgrounds.  They felt that it inevitably makes people ugly, and theywere perfectly right.  We try to improve the conditions of therace by means of good air, free sunlight, wholesome water, and hideousbare buildings for the better housing of the lower orders.  Butthese things merely produce health, they do not produce beauty. For this, Art is required, and the true disciples of the great artistare not his studio-imitators, but those who become like his works ofart, be they plastic as in Greek days, or pictorial as in modern times;in a word, Life is Art’s best, Art’s only pupil.—TheDecay of Lying.

LIFE THE PLAGIARIST

I once asked a lady, who knew Thackeray intimately, whether he hadhad any model for Becky Sharp.  She told me that Becky was an invention,but that the idea of the character had been partly suggested by a governesswho lived in the neighbourhood of Kensington Square, and was the companionof a very selfish and rich old woman.  I inquired what became ofthe governess, and she replied that, oddly enough, some years afterthe appearance of Vanity Fair, she ran away with the nephew ofthe lady with whom she was living, and for a short time made a greatsplash in society, quite in Mrs. Rawdon Crawley’s style, and entirelyby Mrs. Rawdon Crawley’s methods.  Ultimately she came togrief, disappeared to the Continent, and used to be occasionally seenat Monte Carlo and other gambling places.  The noble gentlemanfrom whom the same great sentimentalist drew Colonel Newcome died, afew months after The Newcomerhad reached a fourth edition, withthe word ‘Adsum’ on his lips.  Shortly after Mr. Stevensonpublished his curious psychological story of transformation, a friendof mine, called Mr. Hyde, was in the north of London, and being anxiousto get to a railway station, took what he thought would be a short cut,lost his way, and found himself in a network of mean, evil-looking streets. Feeling rather nervous he began to walk extremely fast, when suddenlyout of an archway ran a child right between his legs.  It fellon the pavement, he tripped over it, and trampled upon it.  Beingof course very much frightened and a little hurt, it began to scream,and in a few seconds the whole street was full of rough people who camepouring out of the houses like ants.  They surrounded him, andasked him his name.  He was just about to give it when he suddenlyremembered the opening incident in Mr. Stevenson’s story. He was so filled with horror at having realised in his own person thatterrible and well-written scene, and at having done accidentally, thoughin fact, what the Mr. Hyde of fiction had done with deliberate intent,that he ran away as hard as he could go.  He was, however, veryclosely followed, and finally he took refuge in a surgery, the doorof which happened to be open, where he explained to a young assistant,who happened to be there, exactly what had occurred.  The humanitariancrowd were induced to go away on his giving them a small sum of money,and as soon as the coast was clear he left.  As he passed out,the name on the brass door-plate of the surgery caught his eye. It was ‘Jekyll.’  At least it should have been.—TheDecay of Lying.

THE INDISPENSABLE EAST

What is true about the drama and the novel is no less true aboutthose arts that we call the decorative arts.  The whole historyof these arts in Europe is the record of the struggle between Orientalism,with its frank rejection of imitation, its love of artistic convention,its dislike to the actual representation of any object in Nature, andour own imitative spirit.  Wherever the former has been paramount,as in Byzantium, Sicily and Spain, by actual contact, or in the restof Europe by the influence of the Crusades, we have had beautiful andimaginative work in which the visible things of life are transmutedinto artistic conventions, and the things that Life has not are inventedand fashioned for her delight.  But wherever we have returned toLife and Nature, our work has always become vulgar, common and uninteresting. Modern tapestry, with its aërial effects, its elaborate perspective,its broad expanses of waste sky, its faithful and laborious realism,has no beauty whatsoever.  The pictorial glass of Germany is absolutelydetestable.  We are beginning to weave possible carpets in England,but only because we have returned to the method and spirit of the East. Our rugs and carpets of twenty years ago, with their solemn depressingtruths, their inane worship of Nature, their sordid reproductions ofvisible objects, have become, even to the Philistine, a source of laughter. A cultured Mahomedan once remarked to us, “You Christians areso occupied in misinterpreting the fourth commandment that you havenever thought of making an artistic application of the second.” He was perfectly right, and the whole truth of the matter is this: Theproper school to learn art in is not Life but Art.—The Decayof Lying.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE IMPRESSIONISTS ON CLIMATE

Where, if not from the Impressionists, do we get those wonderfulbrown fogs that come creeping down our streets, blurring the gas-lampsand changing the houses into monstrous shadows?  To whom, if notto them and their master, do we owe the lovely silver mists that broodover our river, and turn to faint forms of fading grace curved bridgeand swaying barge?  The extraordinary change that has taken placein the climate of London during the last ten years is entirely due toa particular school of Art.  You smile.  Consider the matterfrom a scientific or a metaphysical point of view, and you will findthat I am right.  For what is Nature?  Nature is no greatmother who has borne us.  She is our creation.  It is in ourbrain that she quickens to life.  Things are because we see them,and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the Arts that have influencedus.  To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty.  Then, andthen only, does it come into existence.  At present, people seefogs, not because there are fogs, but because poets and painters havetaught them the mysterious loveliness of such effects.  There mayhave been fogs for centuries in London.  I dare say there were. But no one saw them, and so we do not know anything about them. They did not exist till Art had invented them.  Now, it must beadmitted, fogs are carried to excess.  They have become the meremannerism of a clique, and the exaggerated realism of their method givesdull people bronchitis.  Where the cultured catch an effect, theuncultured catch cold.  And so, let us be humane, and invite Artto turn her wonderful eyes elsewhere.  She has done so already,indeed.  That white quivering sunlight that one sees now in France,with its strange blotches of mauve, and its restless violet shadows,is her latest fancy, and, on the whole, Nature reproduces it quite admirably. Where she used to give us Corots and Daubignys, she gives us now exquisiteMonets and entrancing Pissaros.  Indeed there are moments, rare,it is true, but still to be observed from time to time, when Naturebecomes absolutely modern.  Of course she is not always to be reliedupon.  The fact is that she is in this unfortunate position. Art creates an incomparable and unique effect, and, having done so,passes on to other things.  Nature, upon the other hand, forgettingthat imitation can be made the sincerest form of insult, keeps on repeatingthis effect until we all become absolutely wearied of it.  Nobodyof any real culture, for instance, ever talks nowadays about the beautyof a sunset.  Sunsets are quite old-fashioned.  They belongto the time when Turner was the last note in art.  To admire themis a distinct sign of provincialism of temperament.  Upon the otherhand they go on.—The Decay of Lying.

AN EXPOSURE OF NATURALISM

After all, what the imitative arts really give us are merely thevarious styles of particular artists, or of certain schools of artists. Surely you don’t imagine that the people of the Middle Ages boreany resemblance at all to the figures on mediæval stained glass,or in mediæval stone and wood carving, or on mediæval metal-work,or tapestries, or illuminated MSS.  They were probably very ordinary-lookingpeople, with nothing grotesque, or remarkable, or fantastic in theirappearance.  The Middle Ages, as we know them in art, are simplya definite form of style, and there is no reason at all why an artistwith this style should not be produced in the nineteenth century. No great artist ever sees things as they really are.  If he did,he would cease to be an artist.  Take an example from our own day. I know that you are fond of Japanese things.  Now, do you reallyimagine that the Japanese people, as they are presented to us in art,have any existence?  If you do, you have never understood Japaneseart at all.  The Japanese people are the deliberate self-consciouscreation of certain individual artists.  If you set a picture byHokusai, or Hokkei, or any of the great native painters, beside a realJapanese gentleman or lady, you will see that there is not the slightestresemblance between them.  The actual people who live in Japanare not unlike the general run of English people; that is to say, theyare extremely commonplace, and have nothing curious or extraordinaryabout them.  In fact the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people.  One of ourmost charming painters { 3}went recently to the Land of the Chrysanthemum in the foolish hope ofseeing the Japanese.  All he saw, all he had the chance of painting,were a few lanterns and some fans.  He was quite unable to discoverthe inhabitants, as his delightful exhibition at Messrs. Dowdeswell’sGallery showed only too well.  He did not know that the Japanesepeople are, as I have said, simply a mode of style, an exquisite fancyof art.  And so, if you desire to see a Japanese effect, you willnot behave like a tourist and go to Tokio.  On the contrary, youwill stay at home and steep yourself in the work of certain Japaneseartists, and then, when you have absorbed the spirit of their style,and caught their imaginative manner of vision, you will go some afternoonand sit in the Park or stroll down Piccadilly, and if you cannot seean absolutely Japanese effect there, you will not see it anywhere. Or, to return again to the past, take as another instance the ancientGreeks.  Do you think that Greek art ever tells us what the Greekpeople were like?  Do you believe that the Athenian women werelike the stately dignified figures of the Parthenon frieze, or likethose marvellous goddesses who sat in the triangular pediments of thesame building?  If you judge from the art, they certainly wereso.  But read an authority, like Aristophanes, for instance. You will find that the Athenian ladies laced tightly, wore high-heeledshoes, dyed their hair yellow, painted and rouged their faces, and wereexactly like any silly fashionable or fallen creature of our own day. The fact is that we look back on the ages entirely through the mediumof art, and art, very fortunately, has never once told us the truth.—TheDecay of Lying.

THOMAS GRIFFITHS WAINEWRIGHT

He was taken back to Newgate, preparatory to his removal to the colonies. In a fanciful passage in one of his early essays he had fancied himself‘lying in Horsemonger Gaol under sentence of death’ forhaving been unable to resist the temptation of stealing some Marc Antoniosfrom the British Museum in order to complete his collection.  Thesentence now passed on him was to a man of his culture a form of death. He complained bitterly of it to his friends, and pointed out, with agood deal of reason, some people may fancy, that the money was practicallyhis own, having come to him from his mother, and that the forgery, suchas it was, had been committed thirteen years before, which, to use hisown phrase, was at least a circonstance attenuante.  Thepermanence of personality is a very subtle metaphysical problem, andcertainly the English law solves the question in an extremely rough-and-readymanner.  There is, however, something dramatic in the fact thatthis heavy punishment was inflicted on him for what, if we rememberhis fatal influence on the prose of modern journalism, was certainlynot the worst of all his sins.

While he was in gaol, Dickens, Macready, and Hablot Browne came acrosshim by chance.  They had been going over the prisons of London,searching for artistic effects, and in Newgate they suddenly caughtsight of Wainewright.  He met them with a defiant stare, Forstertells us, but Macready was ‘horrified to recognise a man familiarlyknown to him in former years, and at whose table he had dined.’

Others had more curiosity, and his cell was for some time a kindof fashionable lounge.  Many men of letters went down to visittheir old literary comrade.  But he was no longer the kind light-heartedJanus whom Charles Lamb admired.  He seems to have grown quitecynical.

To the agent of an insurance company who was visiting him one afternoon,and thought he would improve the occasion by pointing out that, afterall, crime was a bad speculation, he replied: ‘Sir, you City menenter on your speculations, and take the chances of them.  Someof your speculations succeed, some fail.  Mine happen to have failed,yours happen to have succeeded.  That is the only difference, sir,between my visitor and me.  But, sir, I will tell you one thingin which I have succeeded to the last.  I have been determinedthrough life to hold the position of a gentleman.  I have alwaysdone so.  I do so still.  It is the custom of this place thateach of the inmates of a cell shall take his morning’s turn ofsweeping it out.  I occupy a cell with a bricklayer and a sweep,but they never offer me the broom!’  When a friend reproachedhim with the murder of Helen Abercrombie he shrugged his shoulders andsaid, ‘Yes; it was a dreadful thing to do, but she had very thickankles.’—Pen, Pencil and Poison.

WAINEWRIGHT AT HOBART TOWN

His love of art, however, never deserted him.  At Hobart Townhe started a studio, and returned to sketching and portrait-painting,and his conversation and manners seem not to have lost their charm. Nor did he give up his habit of poisoning, and there are two cases onrecord in which he tried to make away with people who had offended him. But his hand seems to have lost its cunning.  Both of his attemptswere complete failures, and in 1844, being thoroughly dissatisfied withTasmanian society, he presented a memorial to the governor of the settlement,Sir John Eardley Wilmot, praying for a ticket-of-leave.  In ithe speaks of himself as being ‘tormented by ideas struggling foroutward form and realisation, barred up from increase of knowledge,and deprived of the exercise of profitable or even of decorous speech.’ His request, however, was refused, and the associate of Coleridge consoledhimself by making those marvellous Paradis Artificielswhosesecret is only known to the eaters of opium.  In 1852 he died ofapoplexy, his sole living companion being a cat, for which he had evincedat extraordinary affection.

His crimes seem to have had an important effect upon his art. They gave a strong personality to his style, a quality that his earlywork certainly lacked.  In a note to the Life of Dickens,Forster mentions that in 1847 Lady Blessington received from her brother,Major Power, who held a military appointment at Hobart Town, an oilportrait of a young lady from his clever brush; and it is said that‘he had contrived to put the expression of his own wickednessinto the portrait of a nice, kind-hearted girl.’  M. Zola,in one of his novels, tells us of a young man who, having committeda murder, takes to art, and paints greenish impressionist portraitsof perfectly respectable people, all of which bear a curious resemblanceto his victim.  The development of Mr. Wainewright’s styleseems to me far more subtle and suggestive.  One can fancy an intensepersonality being created out of sin.—Pen, Pencil and Poison.

CARDINAL NEWMAN AND THE AUTOBIOGRAPHERS

In literature mere egotism is delightful.  It is what fascinatesus in the letters of personalities so different as Cicero and Balzac,Flaubert and Berlioz, Byron and Madame de Sévigné. Whenever we come across it, and, strangely enough, it is rather rare,we cannot but welcome it, and do not easily forget it.  Humanitywill always love Rousseau for having confessed his sins, not to a priest,but to the world, and the couchant nymphs that Cellini wrought in bronzefor the castle of King Francis, the green and gold Perseus, even, thatin the open Loggia at Florence shows the moon the dead terror that onceturned life to stone, have not given it more pleasure than has thatautobiography in which the supreme scoundrel of the Renaissance relatesthe story of his splendour and his shame.  The opinions, the character,the achievements of the man, matter very little.  He may be a scepticlike the gentle Sieur de Montaigne, or a saint like the bitter son ofMonica, but when he tells us his own secrets he can always charm ourears to listening and our lips to silence.  The mode of thoughtthat Cardinal Newman represented—if that can be called a modeof thought which seeks to solve intellectual problems by a denial ofthe supremacy of the intellect—may not, cannot, I think, survive. But the world will never weary of watching that troubled soul in itsprogress from darkness to darkness.  The lonely church at Littlemore,where ‘the breath of the morning is damp, and worshippers arefew,’ will always be dear to it, and whenever men see the yellowsnapdragon blossoming on the wall of Trinity they will think of thatgracious undergraduate who saw in the flower’s sure recurrencea prophecy that he would abide for ever with the Benign Mother of hisdays—a prophecy that Faith, in her wisdom or her folly, sufferednot to be fulfilled.  Yes; autobiography is irresistible.—TheCritic as Artist.

ROBERT BROWNING

Taken as a whole the man was great.  He did not belong to theOlympians, and had all the incompleteness of the Titan.  He didnot survey, and it was but rarely that he could sing.  His workis marred by struggle, violence and effort, and he passed not from emotionto form, but from thought to chaos.  Still, he was great. He has been called a thinker, and was certainly a man who was alwaysthinking, and always thinking aloud; but it was not thought that fascinatedhim, but rather the processes by which thought moves.  It was themachine he loved, not what the machine makes.  The method by whichthe fool arrives at his folly was as dear to him as the ultimate wisdomof the wise.  So much, indeed, did the subtle mechanism of mindfascinate him that he despised language, or looked upon it as an incompleteinstrument of expression.  Rhyme, that exquisite echo which inthe Muse’s hollow hill creates and answers its own voice; rhyme,which in the hands of the real artist becomes not merely a materialelement of metrical beauty, but a spiritual element of thought and passionalso, waking a new mood, it may be, or stirring a fresh train of ideas,or opening by mere sweetness and suggestion of sound some golden doorat which the Imagination itself had knocked in vain; rhyme, which canturn man’s utterance to the speech of gods; rhyme, the one chordwe have added to the Greek lyre, became in Robert Browning’s handsa grotesque, misshapen thing, which at times made him masquerade inpoetry as a low comedian, and ride Pegasus too often with his tonguein his cheek.  There are moments when he wounds us by monstrousmusic.  Nay, if he can only get his music by breaking the stringsof his lute, he breaks them, and they snap in discord, and no Atheniantettix, making melody from tremulous wings, lights on the ivory hornto make the movement perfect, or the interval less harsh.  Yet,he was great: and though he turned language into ignoble clay, he madefrom it men and women that live.  He is the most Shakespeariancreature since Shakespeare.  If Shakespeare could sing with myriadlips, Browning could stammer through a thousand mouths.  Even now,as I am speaking, and speaking not against him but for him, there glidesthrough the room the pageant of his persons.  There, creeps FraLippo Lippi with his cheeks still burning from some girl’s hotkiss.  There, stands dread Saul with the lordly male-sapphiresgleaming in his turban.  Mildred Tresham is there, and the Spanishmonk, yellow with hatred, and Blougram, and Ben Ezra, and the Bishopof St. Praxed’s.  The spawn of Setebos gibbers in the corner,and Sebald, hearing Pippa pass by, looks on Ottima’s haggard face,and loathes her and his own sin, and himself.  Pale as the whitesatin of his doublet, the melancholy king watches with dreamy treacherouseyes too loyal Strafford pass forth to his doom, and Andrea shuddersas he hears the cousins whistle in the garden, and bids his perfectwife go down.  Yes, Browning was great.  And as what willhe be remembered?  As a poet?  Ah, not as a poet!  Hewill be remembered as a writer of fiction, as the most supreme writerof fiction, it may be, that we have ever had.  His sense of dramaticsituation was unrivalled, and, if he could not answer his own problems,he could at least put problems forth, and what more should an artistdo?  Considered from the point of view of a creator of characterhe ranks next to him who made Hamlet.  Had he been articulate,he might have sat beside him.  The only man who can touch the hemof his garment is George Meredith.  Meredith is a prose Browning,and so is Browning. He used poetry as a medium for writing in prose.—TheCritic as Artist.

THE TWO SUPREME AND HIGHEST ARTS

Life and Literature, life and the perfect expression of life. The principles of the former, as laid down by the Greeks, we may notrealise in an age so marred by false ideals as our own.  The principlesof the latter, as they laid them down, are, in many cases, so subtlethat we can hardly understand them.  Recognising that the mostperfect art is that which most fully mirrors man in all his infinitevariety, they elaborated the criticism of language, considered in thelight of the mere material of that art, to a point to which we, withour accentual system of reasonable or emotional emphasis, can barelyif at all attain; studying, for instance, the metrical movements ofa prose as scientifically as a modern musician studies harmony and counterpoint,and, I need hardly say, with much keener æsthetic instinct. In this they were right, as they were right in all things.  Sincethe introduction of printing, and the fatal development of the habitof reading amongst the middle and lower classes of this country, therehas been a tendency in literature to appeal more and more to the eye,and less and less to the ear which is really the sense which, from thestandpoint of pure art, it should seek to please, and by whose canonsof pleasure it should abide always.  Even the work of Mr. Pater,who is, on the whole, the most perfect master of English prose now creatingamongst us, is often far more like a piece of mosaic than a passagein music, and seems, here and there, to lack the true rhythmical lifeof words and the fine freedom and richness of effect that such rhythmicallife produces.  We, in fact, have made writing a definite modeof composition, and have treated it as a form of elaborate design. The Greeks, upon the other hand, regarded writing simply as a methodof chronicling.  Their test was always the spoken word in its musicaland metrical relations.  The voice was the medium, and the earthe critic.  I have sometimes thought that the story of Homer’sblindness might be really an artistic myth, created in critical days,and serving to remind us, not merely that the great poet is always aseer, seeing less with the eyes of the body than he does with the eyesof the soul, but that he is a true singer also, building his song outof music, repeating each line over and over again to himself till hehas caught the secret of its melody, chaunting in darkness the wordsthat are winged with light.  Certainly, whether this be so or not,it was to his blindness, as an occasion, if not as a cause, that England’sgreat poet owed much of the majestic movement and sonorous splendourof his later verse.  When Milton could no longer write he beganto sing.—The Critic as Artist.

THE SECRETS OF IMMORTALITY

On the mouldering citadel of Troy lies the lizard like a thing ofgreen bronze.  The owl has built her nest in the palace of Priam. Over the empty plain wander shepherd and goatherd with their flocks,and where, on the wine-surfaced, oily sea, οινοψποντος, as Homer calls it, copper-prowedand streaked with vermilion, the great galleys of the Danaoi came intheir gleaming crescent, the lonely tunny-fisher sits in his littleboat and watches the bobbing corks of his net.  Yet, every morningthe doors of the city are thrown open, and on foot, or in horse-drawnchariot, the warriors go forth to battle, and mock their enemies frombehind their iron masks.  All day long the fight rages, and whennight comes the torches gleam by the tents, and the cresset burns inthe hall.  Those who live in marble or on painted panel, know oflife but a single exquisite instant, eternal indeed in its beauty, butlimited to one note of passion or one mood of calm.  Those whomthe poet makes live have their myriad emotions of joy and terror, ofcourage and despair, of pleasure and of suffering.  The seasonscome and go in glad or saddening pageant, and with winged or leadenfeet the years pass by before them.  They have their youth andtheir manhood, they are children, and they grow old.  It is alwaysdawn for St. Helena, as Veronese saw her at the window.  Throughthe still morning air the angels bring her the symbol of God’spain.  The cool breezes of the morning lift the gilt threads fromher brow.  On that little hill by the city of Florence, where thelovers of Giorgione are lying, it is always the solstice of noon, ofnoon made so languorous by summer suns that hardly can the slim nakedgirl dip into the marble tank the round bubble of clear glass, and thelong fingers of the lute-player rest idly upon the chords.  Itis twilight always for the dancing nymphs whom Corot set free amongthe silver poplars of France.  In eternal twilight they move, thosefrail diaphanous figures, whose tremulous white feet seem not to touchthe dew-drenched grass they tread on.  But those who walk in epos,drama, or romance, see through the labouring months the young moonswax and wane, and watch the night from evening unto morning star, andfrom sunrise unto sunsetting can note the shifting day with all itsgold and shadow.  For them, as for us, the flowers bloom and wither,and the Earth, that Green-tressed Goddess as Coleridge calls her, altersher raiment for their pleasure.  The statue is concentrated toone moment of perfection.  The image stained upon the canvas possessesno spiritual element of growth or change.  If they know nothingof death, it is because they know little of life, for the secrets oflife and death belong to those, and those only, whom the sequence oftime affects, and who possess not merely the present but the future,and can rise or fall from a past of glory or of shame.  Movement,that problem of the visible arts, can be truly realised by Literaturealone.  It is Literature that shows us the body in its swiftnessand the soul in its unrest.—The Critic as Artist.

THE CRITIC AND HIS MATERIAL

Who cares whether Mr. Ruskin’s views on Turner are sound ornot?  What does it matter?  That mighty and majestic proseof his, so fervid and so fiery-coloured in its noble eloquence, so richin its elaborate symphonic music, so sure and certain, at its best,in subtle choice of word and epithet, is at least as great a work ofart as any of those wonderful sunsets that bleach or rot on their corruptedcanvases in England’s Gallery; greater indeed, one is apt to thinkat times, not merely because its equal beauty is more enduring, buton account of the fuller variety of its appeal, soul speaking to soulin those long-cadenced lines, not through form and colour alone, thoughthrough these, indeed, completely and without loss, but with intellectualand emotional utterance, with lofty passion and with loftier thought,with imaginative insight, and with poetic aim; greater, I always think,even as Literature is the greater art.  Who, again, cares whetherMr. Pater has put into the portrait of Monna Lisa something that Lionardonever dreamed of?  The painter may have been merely the slave ofan archaic smile, as some have fancied, but whenever I pass into thecool galleries of the Palace of the Louvre, and stand before that strangefigure ‘set in its marble chair in that cirque of fantastic rocks,as in some faint light under sea,’ I murmur to myself, ‘Sheis older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, shehas been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; andhas been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her:and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants; and, as Leda,was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as St. Anne, the mother of Mary;and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, andlives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments,and tinged the eyelids and the hands.’  And I say to my friend,‘The presence that thus so strangely rose beside the waters isexpressive of what in the ways of a thousand years man had come to desire’;and he answers me, ‘Hers is the head upon which all “theends of the world are come,” and the eyelids are a little weary.’

And so the picture becomes more wonderful to us than it really is,and reveals to us a secret of which, in truth, it knows nothing, andthe music of the mystical prose is as sweet in our ears as was thatflute-player’s music that lent to the lips of La Gioconda thosesubtle and poisonous curves.  Do you ask me what Lionardo wouldhave said had any one told him of this picture that ‘all the thoughtsand experience of the world had etched and moulded therein that whichthey had of power to refine and make expressive the outward form, theanimalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the reverie of the Middle Agewith its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of thePagan world, the sins of the Borgias?’  He would probablyhave answered that he had contemplated none of these things, but hadconcerned himself simply with certain arrangements of lines and masses,and with new and curious colour-harmonies of blue and green.  Andit is for this very reason that the criticism which I have quoted iscriticism of the highest kind.  It treats the work of art simplyas a starting-point for a new creation.  It does not confine itself—letus at least suppose so for the moment—to discovering the realintention of the artist and accepting that as final.  And in thisit is right, for the meaning of any beautiful created thing is, at least,as much in the soul of him who looks at it, as it was in his soul whowrought it.  Nay, it is rather the beholder who lends to the beautifulthing its myriad meanings, and makes it marvellous for us, and setsit in some new relation to the age, so that it becomes a vital portionof our lives, and a symbol of what we pray for, or perhaps of what,having prayed for, we fear that we may receive.—The Criticas Artist.

DANTE THE LIVING GUIDE

There is no mood or passion that Art cannot give us, and those ofus who have discovered her secret can settle beforehand what our experiencesare going to be.  We can choose our day and select our hour. We can say to ourselves, ‘To-morrow, at dawn, we shall walk withgrave Virgil through the valley of the shadow of death,’ and lo!the dawn finds us in the obscure wood, and the Mantuan stands by ourside.  We pass through the gate of the legend fatal to hope, andwith pity or with joy behold the horror of another world.  Thehypocrites go by, with their painted faces and their cowls of gildedlead.  Out of the ceaseless winds that drive them, the carnal lookat us, and we watch the heretic rending his flesh, and the glutton lashedby the rain.  We break the withered branches from the tree in thegrove of the Harpies, and each dull-hued poisonous twig bleeds withred blood before us, and cries aloud with bitter cries.  Out ofa horn of fire Odysseus speaks to us, and when from his sepulchre offlame the great Ghibelline rises, the pride that triumphs over the tortureof that bed becomes ours for a moment.  Through the dim purpleair fly those who have stained the world with the beauty of their sin,and in the pit of loathsome disease, dropsy-stricken and swollen ofbody into the semblance of a monstrous lute, lies Adamo di Brescia,the coiner of false coin.  He bids us listen to his misery; westop, and with dry and gaping lips he tells us how he dreams day andnight of the brooks of clear water that in cool dewy channels gush downthe green Casentine hills.  Sinon, the false Greek of Troy, mocksat him.  He smites him in the face, and they wrangle.  Weare fascinated by their shame, and loiter, till Virgil chides us andleads us away to that city turreted by giants where great Nimrod blowshis horn.  Terrible things are in store for us, and we go to meetthem in Dante’s raiment and with Dante’s heart.  Wetraverse the marshes of the Styx, and Argenti swims to the boat throughthe slimy waves.  He calls to us, and we reject him.  Whenwe hear the voice of his agony we are glad, and Virgil praises us forthe bitterness of our scorn.  We tread upon the cold crystal ofCocytus, in which traitors stick like straws in glass.  Our footstrikes against the head of Bocca.  He will not tell us his name,and we tear the hair in handfuls from the screaming skull.  Alberigoprays us to break the ice upon his face that he may weep a little. We pledge our word to him, and when he has uttered his dolorous talewe deny the word that we have spoken, and pass from him; such crueltybeing courtesy indeed, for who more base than he who has mercy for thecondemned of God?  In the jaws of Lucifer we see the man who soldChrist, and in the jaws of Lucifer the men who slew Cæsar. We tremble, and come forth to re-behold the stars.—The Criticas Artist.

THE LIMITATIONS OF GENIUS

The appeal of all Art is simply to the artistic temperament. Art does not address herself to the specialist.  Her claim is thatshe is universal, and that in all her manifestations she is one. Indeed, so far from its being true that the artist is the best judgeof art, a really great artist can never judge of other people’swork at all, and can hardly, in fact, judge of his own.  That veryconcentration of vision that makes a man an artist, limits by its sheerintensity his faculty of fine appreciation.  The energy of creationhurries him blindly on to his own goal.  The wheels of his chariotraise the dust as a cloud around him.  The gods are hidden fromeach other.  They can recognise their worshippers.  That isall . . . Wordsworth saw in Endymionmerely a pretty piece ofPaganism, and Shelley, with his dislike of actuality, was deaf to Wordsworth’smessage, being repelled by its form, and Byron, that great passionatehuman incomplete creature, could appreciate neither the poet of thecloud nor the poet of the lake, and the wonder of Keats was hidden fromhim.  The realism of Euripides was hateful to Sophokles. Those droppings of warm tears had no music for him.  Milton, withhis sense of the grand style, could not understand the method of Shakespeare,any more than could Sir Joshua the method of Gainsborough.  Badartists always admire each other’s work.  They call it beinglarge-minded and free from prejudice.  But a truly great artistcannot conceive of life being shown, or beauty fashioned, under anyconditions other than those that he has selected.  Creation employsall its critical faculty within its own sphere.  It may not useit in the sphere that belongs to others.  It is exactly becausea man cannot do a thing that he is the proper judge of it.—TheCritic as Artist.

WANTED A NEW BACKGROUND

He who would stir us now by fiction must either give us an entirelynew background, or reveal to us the soul of man in its innermost workings. The first is for the moment being done for us by Mr. Rudyard Kipling. As one turns over the pages of his Plain Tales from the Hills,one feels as if one were seated under a palm-tree reading life by superbflashes of vulgarity.  The bright colours of the bazaars dazzleone’s eyes.  The jaded, second-rate Anglo-Indians are inexquisite incongruity with their surroundings.  The mere lack ofstyle in the story-teller gives an odd journalistic realism to whathe tells us.  From the point of view of literature Mr. Kiplingis a genius who drops his aspirates.  From the point of view oflife, he is a reporter who knows vulgarity better than any one has everknown it.  Dickens knew its clothes and its comedy.  Mr. Kiplingknows its essence and its seriousness.  He is our first authorityon the second-rate, and has seen marvellous things through keyholes,and his backgrounds are real works of art.  As for the second condition,we have had Browning, and Meredith is with us.  But there is stillmuch to be done in the sphere of introspection.  People sometimessay that fiction is getting too morbid.  As far as psychology isconcerned, it has never been morbid enough.  We have merely touchedthe surface of the soul, that is all.  In one single ivory cellof the brain there are stored away things more marvellous and more terriblethan even they have dreamed of, who, like the author of Le Rougeet le Noir, have sought to track the soul into its most secret places,and to make life confess its dearest sins.  Still, there is a limiteven to the number of untried backgrounds, and it is possible that afurther development of the habit of introspection may prove fatal tothat creative faculty to which it seeks to supply fresh material. I myself am inclined to think that creation is doomed.  It springsfrom too primitive, too natural an impulse.  However this may be,it is certain that the subject-matter at the disposal of creation isalways diminishing, while the subject-matter of criticism increasesdaily.  There are always new attitudes for the mind, and new pointsof view.  The duty of imposing form upon chaos does not grow lessas the world advances.  There was never a time when Criticism wasmore needed than it is now.  It is only by its means that Humanitycan become conscious of the point at which it has arrived.—TheCritic as Artist.

WITHOUT FRONTIERS

Goethe—you will not misunderstand what I say—was a Germanof the Germans.  He loved his country—no man more so. Its people were dear to him; and he led them.  Yet, when the ironhoof of Napoleon trampled upon vineyard and cornfield, his lips weresilent.  ‘How can one write songs of hatred without hating?’he said to Eckermann, ‘and how could I, to whom culture and barbarismare alone of importance, hate a nation which is among the most cultivatedof the earth and to which I owe so great a part of my own cultivation?’ This note, sounded in the modern world by Goethe first, will become,I think, the starting point for the cosmopolitanism of the future. Criticism will annihilate race-prejudices, by insisting upon the unityof the human mind in the variety of its forms.  If we are temptedto make war upon another nation, we shall remember that we are seekingto destroy an element of our own culture, and possibly its most importantelement.  As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will alwayshave its fascination.  When it is looked upon as vulgar, it willcease to be popular.  The change will of course be slow, and peoplewill not be conscious of it.  They will not say ‘We willnot war against France because her prose is perfect,’ but becausethe prose of France is perfect, they will not hate the land.  Intellectualcriticism will bind Europe together in bonds far closer than those thatcan be forged by shopman or sentimentalist.  It will give us thepeace that springs from understanding.—The Critic as Artist.

THE POETRY OF ARCHÆOLOGY

Infessura tells us that in 1485 some workmen digging on the AppianWay came across an old Roman sarcophagus inscribed with the name ‘Julia,daughter of Claudius.’  On opening the coffer they foundwithin its marble womb the body of a beautiful girl of about fifteenyears of age, preserved by the embalmer’s skill from corruptionand the decay of time.  Her eyes were half open, her hair rippledround her in crisp curling gold, and from her lips and cheek the bloomof maidenhood had not yet departed.  Borne back to the Capitol,she became at once the centre of a new cult, and from all parts of thecity crowded pilgrims to worship at the wonderful shrine, till the Pope,fearing lest those who had found the secret of beauty in a Pagan tombmight forget what secrets Judæa’s rough and rock-hewn sepulchrecontained, had the body conveyed away by night, and in secret buried. Legend though it may be, yet the story is none the less valuable asshowing us the attitude of the Renaissance towards the antique world. Archæology to them was not a mere science for the antiquarian;it was a means by which they could touch the dry dust of antiquity intothe very breath and beauty of life, and fill with the new wine of romanticismforms that else had been old and outworn.  From the pulpit of NiccolaPisano down to Mantegna’s ‘Triumph of Cæsar,’and the service Cellini designed for King Francis, the influence ofthis spirit can be traced; nor was it confined merely to the immobilearts—the arts of arrested movement—but its influence wasto be seen also in the great Græco-Roman masques which were theconstant amusement of the gay courts of the time, and in the publicpomps and processions with which the citizens of big commercial townswere wont to greet the princes that chanced to visit them; pageants,by the way, which were considered so important that large prints weremade of them and published—a fact which is a proof of the generalinterest at the time in matters of such kind.—The Truth ofMasks.

THE ART OF ARCHÆOLOGY

Indeed archæology is only really delightful when transfusedinto some form of art.  I have no desire to underrate the servicesof laborious scholars, but I feel that the use Keats made of Lemprière’sDictionary is of far more value to us than Professor Max Müller’streatment of the same mythology as a disease of language.  BetterEndymionthan any theory, however sound, or, as in the presentinstance, unsound, of an epidemic among adjectives!  And who doesnot feel that the chief glory of Piranesi’s book on Vases is thatit gave Keats the suggestion for his ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’? Art, and art only, can make archæology beautiful; and the theatricart can use it most directly and most vividly, for it can combine inone exquisite presentation the illusion of actual life with the wonderof the unreal world.  But the sixteenth century was not merelythe age of Vitruvius; it was the age of Vecellio also.  Every nationseems suddenly to have become interested in the dress of its neighbours. Europe began to investigate its own clothes, and the amount of bookspublished on national costumes is quite extraordinary.  At thebeginning of the century the Nuremberg Chronicle, with its twothousand illustrations, reached its fifth edition, and before the centurywas over seventeen editions were published of Munster’s Cosmography. Besides these two books there were also the works of Michael Colyns,of Hans Weigel, of Amman, and of Vecellio himself, all of them wellillustrated, some of the drawings in Vecellio being probably from thehand of Titian.

Nor was it merely from books and treatises that they acquired theirknowledge.  The development of the habit of foreign travel, theincreased commercial intercourse between countries, and the frequencyof diplomatic missions, gave every nation many opportunities of studyingthe various forms of contemporary dress.  After the departure fromEngland, for instance, of the ambassadors from the Czar, the Sultanand the Prince of Morocco, Henry the Eighth and his friends gave severalmasques in the strange attire of their visitors.  Later on Londonsaw, perhaps too often, the sombre splendour of the Spanish Court, andto Elizabeth came envoys from all lands, whose dress, Shakespeare tellsus, had an important influence on English costume.—The Truthof Masks.

HEROD SUPPLIANT

Non, non, vous ne voulez pas cela.  Vous me dites cela seulementpour me faire de la peine, parce que je vous ai regardée pendanttoute la soirée.  Eh! bien, oui.  Je vous ai regardéependant toute la soirée.  Votre beauté m’atroublé.  Votre beauté m’a terriblement troublé,et je vous ai trop regardée.  Mais je ne le ferai plus. Il ne faut regarder ni les choses ni les personnes.  Il ne fautregarder que dans les miroirs.  Car les miroirs ne nous montrentque des masques . . . Oh!  Oh! du vin! j’ai soif . . . Salomé,Salomé, soyons amis.  Enfin, voyez . . . Qu’est-ceque je voulais dire?  Qu’est-ce que c’était? Ah! je m’en souviens! . . . Salomé!  Non, venez plusprès de moi.  J’ai peur que vous ne m’entendiezpas . . . Salomé, vous connaissez mes paons blancs, mes beauxpaons blancs, qui se promènent dans le jardin entre les myrteset les grands cyprès.  Leurs becs sont dorés, etles grains qu’ils mangent sont dorés aussi, et leurs piedssont teints de pourpre.  La pluie vient quand ils crient, et quandils se pavanent la lune se montre au ciel.  Ils vont deux àdeux entre les cyprès et les myrtes noirs et chacun a son esclavepour le soigner.  Quelquefois ils volent à travers les arbres,et quelquefois ils couchent sur le gazon et autour de l’étang. Il n’y a pas dans le monde d’oiseaux si merveilleux. Il n’y a aucun roi du monde qui possède des oiseaux aussimerveilleux.  Je suis sûr que même César nepossède pas d’oiseaux aussi beaux.  Eh bien! je vousdonnerai cinquante de mes paons.  Ils vous suivront partout, etau milieu d’eux vous serez comme la lune dans un grand nuage blanc. . . Je vous les donnerai tous.  Je n’en ai que cent, etil n’y a aucun roi du monde qui possède des paons commeles miens, mais je vous les donnerai tous.  Seulement, il fautme délier de ma parole et ne pas me demander ce que vous m’avezdemandé.—Salomé.

THE TETRARCH’S REMORSE

Salomé, pensez à ce que vous faites.  Cet hommevient peut-être de Dieu.  Je suis sûr qu’il vientde Dieu.  C’est un saint homme.  Le doigt de Dieu l’atouché.  Dieu a mis dans sa bouche des mots terribles. Dans le palais, comme dans le désert, Dieu est toujours aveclui . . . Au moins, c’est possible.  On ne sait pas, maisil est possible que Dieu soit pour lui et avec lui.  Aussi peut-êtreque s’il mourrait, il m’arriverait un malheur.  Enfin,il a dit que le jour où il mourrait il arriverait un malheurà quelqu’un.  Ce ne peut être qu’àmoi.  Souvenez-vous, j’ai glissé dans le sang quandje suis entré ici.  Aussi j’ai entendu un battementd’ailes dans l’air, un battement d’ailes gigantesques. Ce sont de très mauvais présages.  Et il y en avaitd’autres.  Je suis sûr qu’il y en avait d’autres,quoique je ne les aie pas vus.  Eh bien!  Salomé, vousne voulez pas qu’un malheur m’arrive?  Vous ne voulezpas cela.—Salomé.

THE TETRARCH’S TREASURE

Moi, je suis très calme.  Je suis tout à faitcalme.  Écoutez.  J’ai des bijoux cachésici que même votre mère n’a jamais vus, des bijouxtout à fait extraordinaires.  J’ai un collier de perlesà quatre rangs.  On dirait des lunes enchaînéesde rayons d’argent.  On dirait cinquante lunes captives dansun filet d’or.  Une reine l’a porté sur l’ivoirede ses seins.  Toi, quand tu le porteras, tu seras aussi bellequ’une reine.  J’ai des améthystes de deux espèces. Une qui est noire comme le vin.  L’autre qui est rouge commedu vin qu’on a coloré avec de l’eau.  J’aides topazes jaunes comme les yeux des tigres, et des topazes roses commeles yeux des pigeons, et des topazes vertes comme les yeux des chats. J’ai des opales qui brûlent toujours avec une flamme quiest très froide, des opales qui attristent les esprits et ontpeur des ténèbres.  J’ai des onyx semblablesaux prunelles d’une morte.  J’ai des sélénitesqui changent quand la lune change et deviennent pâles quand ellesvoient le soleil.  J’ai des saphirs grands comme des oeufset bleus comme des fleurs bleues.  La mer erre dedans, et la lunene vient jamais troubler le bleu de ses flots.  J’ai deschrysolithes et des béryls, j’ai des chrysoprases et desrubis, j’ai des sardonyx et des hyacinthes, et des calcédoineset je vous les donnerai tous, mais tous, et j’ajouterai d’autreschoses.  Le roi des Indes vient justement de m’envoyer quatreéventails faits de plumes de perroquets, et le roi de Numidieune robe faite de plumes d’autruche.  J’ai un cristalqu’il n’est pas permis aux femmes de voir et que mêmeles jeunes hommes ne doivent regarder qu’après avoir étéflagellés de verges.  Dans un coffret de nacre j’aitrois turquoises merveilleuses.  Quand on les porte sur le fronton peut imaginer des choses qui n’existent pas, et quand on lesporte dans la main on peut rendre les femmes stériles. Ce sont des trésors de grande valeur.  Ce sont des trésorssans prix.  Et ce n’est pas tout.  Dans un coffret d’ébènej’ai deux coupes d’ambre qui ressemblent à des pommesd’or.  Si un ennemi verse du poison dans ces coupes ellesdeviennent comme des pommes d’argent.  Dans un coffret incrustéd’ambre j’ai des sandales incrustées de verre. J’ai des manteaux qui viennent du pays des Sères et desbracelets garnis d’escarboucles et de jade qui viennent de laville d’Euphrate. . . Enfin, que veux-tu, Salomé? Dis-moi ce que tu désires et je te le donnerai.  Je te donneraitout ce que tu demanderas, sauf une chose.  Je te donnerai toutce que je possède, sauf une vie.  Je te donnerai le manteaudu grand prêtre.  Je te donnerai le voile du sanctuaire.—Salomé.

SALOMÉ ANTICIPATES DR. STRAUSS

Ah! tu n’as pas voulu me laisser baiser ta bouche, Iokanaan. Eh bien! je la baiserai maintenant.  Je la mordrai avec mes dentscomme on mord un fruit mûr.  Oui, je baiserai ta bouche,Iokanaan.  Je te l’ai dit, n’est-ce pas? je te l’aidit.  Eh bien! je la baiserai maintenant . . . Mais pourquoi neme regardes-tu pas, Iokanaan?  Tes yeux qui étaient si terribles,qui étaient si pleins de colère et de mépris, ilssont fermés maintenant.  Pourquoi sont-ils fermés? Ouvre tes yeux!  Soulève tes paupières, Iokanaan. Pourquoi ne me regardes-tu pas?  As-tu peur de moi, Iokanaan, quetu ne veux pas me regarder? . . . Et ta langue qui était commeun serpent rouge dardant des poisons, elle ne remue plus, elle ne ditrien maintenant, Iokanaan, cette vipère rouge qui a vomi sonvenin sur moi.  C’est étrange, n’est-ce pas? Comment se fait-il que la vipère rouge ne remue plus? . . . Tun’as pas voulu de moi, Iokanaan.  Tu m’as rejetée. Tu m’as dit des choses infâmes.  Tu m’as traitéecomme une courtisane, comme une prostituée, moi, Salomé,fille d’Hérodias, Princesse de Judée!  Eh bien,Iokanaan, moi je vis encore, mais toi tu es mort et ta tête m’appartient. Je puis en faire ce que je veux.  Je puis la jeter aux chiens etaux oiseaux de l’air.  Ce que laisseront les chiens, lesoiseaux de l’air le mangeront . . . Ah! Iokanaan, Iokanaan, tuas été le seul homme que j’ai aimé. Tous les autres hommes m’inspirent du dégoût. Mais, toi, tu étais beau.  Ton corps était une colonned’ivoire sur un socle d’argent.  C’étaitun jardin plein de colombes et de lis d’argent.  C’étaitune tour d’argent ornée de boucliers d’ivoire. Il n’y avait rien au monde d’aussi blanc que ton corps. Il n’y avait rien au monde d’aussi noir que tes cheveux. Dans le monde tout entier il n’y avait rien d’aussi rougeque ta bouche.  Ta voix était un encensoir qui répandaitd’étranges parfums, et quand je te regardais j’entendaisune musique étrange!  Ah! pourquoi ne m’as-tu pasregardée, Iokanaan?  Derrière tes mains et tes blasphèmestu as caché ton visage.  Tu as mis sur tes yeux le bandeaude celui qui veut voir son Dieu.  Eh bien, tu l’as vu, tonDieu, Iokanaan, mais moi, moi . . . tu ne m’as jamais vue. Si tu m’avais vue, tu m’aurais aimée.  Moi,je t’ai vu, Iokanaan, et je t’ai aimé.  Oh!comme je t’ai aimé.  Je t’aime encore, Iokanaan. Je n’aime que toi . . . J’ai soif de ta beauté. J’ai faim de ton corps.  Et ni le vin, ni les fruits ne peuventapaiser mon désir.  Que ferai-je, Iokanaan, maintenant? Ni les fleuves ni les grandes eaux, ne pourraient éteindre mapassion.  J’étais une Princesse, tu m’as dédaignée. J’étais une vierge, tu m’as déflorée. J’étais chaste, tu as rempli mes veines de feu . . . Ah! Ah! pourquoi ne m’as-tu pas regardée, Iokanaan?  Situ m’avais regardée tu m’aurais aimée. Je sais bien que tu m’aurais aimée, et le mystèrede l’amour est plus grand que le mystére de la mort. Il ne faut regarder que l’amour.—Salomé.

THE YOUNG KING

All rare and costly materials had certainly a great fascination forhim, and in his eagerness to procure them he had sent away many merchants,some to traffic for amber with the rough fisher-folk of the north seas,some to Egypt to look for that curious green turquoise which is foundonly in the tombs of kings, and is said to possess magical properties,some to Persia for silken carpets and painted pottery, and others toIndia to buy gauze and stained ivory, moonstones and bracelets of jade,sandal-wood and blue enamel and shawls of fine wool.

But what had occupied him most was the robe he was to wear at hiscoronation, the robe of tissued gold, and the ruby-studded crown, andthe sceptre with its rows and rings of pearls.  Indeed, it wasof this that he was thinking to-night, as he lay back on his luxuriouscouch, watching the great pinewood log that was burning itself out onthe open hearth.  The designs, which were from the hands of themost famous artists of the time, had been submitted to him many monthsbefore, and he had given orders that the artificers were to toil nightand day to carry them out, and that the whole world was to be searchedfor jewels that would be worthy of their work.  He saw himselfin fancy standing at the high altar of the cathedral in the fair raimentof a King, and a smile played and lingered about his boyish lips, andlit up with a bright lustre his dark woodland eyes.

After some time he rose from his seat, and leaning against the carvedpenthouse of the chimney, looked round at the dimly-lit room. The walls were hung with rich tapestries representing the Triumph ofBeauty.  A large press, inlaid with agate and lapis-lazuli, filledone corner, and facing the window stood a curiously wrought cabinetwith lacquer panels of powdered and mosaiced gold, on which were placedsome delicate goblets of Venetian glass, and a cup of dark-veined onyx. Pale poppies were broidered on the silk coverlet of the bed, as thoughthey had fallen from the tired hands of sleep, and tall reeds of flutedivory bare up the velvet canopy, from which great tufts of ostrich plumessprang, like white foam, to the pallid silver of the fretted ceiling. A laughing Narcissus in green bronze held a polished mirror above itshead.  On the table stood a flat bowl of amethyst.

Outside he could see the huge dome of the cathedral, looming likea bubble over the shadowy houses, and the weary sentinels pacing upand down on the misty terrace by the river.  Far away, in an orchard,a nightingale was singing.  A faint perfume of jasmine came throughthe open window.  He brushed his brown curls back from his forehead,and taking up a lute, let his fingers stray across the cords. His heavy eyelids drooped, and a strange languor came over him. Never before had he felt so keenly, or with such exquisite joy, themagic and the mystery of beautiful things.

When midnight sounded from the clock-tower he touched a bell, andhis pages entered and disrobed him with much ceremony, pouring rose-waterover his hands, and strewing flowers on his pillow.  A few momentsafter that they had left the room, he fell asleep.—The YoungKing.

A CORONATION

And when the Bishop had heard them he knit his brows, and said, ‘Myson, I am an old man, and in the winter of my days, and I know thatmany evil things are done in the wide world.  The fierce robberscome down from the mountains, and carry off the little children, andsell them to the Moors.  The lions lie in wait for the caravans,and leap upon the camels.  The wild boar roots up the corn in thevalley, and the foxes gnaw the vines upon the hill.  The pirateslay waste the sea-coast and burn the ships of the fishermen, and taketheir nets from them.  In the salt-marshes live the lepers; theyhave houses of wattled reeds, and none may come nigh them.  Thebeggars wander through the cities, and eat their food with the dogs. Canst thou make these things not to be?  Wilt thou take the leperfor thy bedfellow, and set the beggar at thy board?  Shall thelion do thy bidding, and the wild boar obey thee?  Is not He whomade misery wiser than thou art?  Wherefore I praise thee not forthis that thou hast done, but I bid thee ride back to the Palace andmake thy face glad, and put on the raiment that beseemeth a king, andwith the crown of gold I will crown thee, and the sceptre of pearl willI place in thy hand.  And as for thy dreams, think no more of them. The burden of this world is too great for one man to bear, and the world’ssorrow too heavy for one heart to suffer.’

‘Sayest thou that in this house?’ said the young King,and he strode past the Bishop, and climbed up the steps of the altar,and stood before the image of Christ.

He stood before the image of Christ, and on his right hand and onhis left were the marvellous vessels of gold, the chalice with the yellowwine, and the vial with the holy oil.  He knelt before the imageof Christ, and the great candles burned brightly by the jewelled shrine,and the smoke of the incense curled in thin blue wreaths through thedome.  He bowed his head in prayer, and the priests in their stiffcopes crept away from the altar.

And suddenly a wild tumult came from the street outside, and in enteredthe nobles with drawn swords and nodding plumes, and shields of polishedsteel.  ‘Where is this dreamer of dreams?’ they cried. ‘Where is this King who is apparelled like a beggar—thisboy who brings shame upon our state?  Surely we will slay him,for he is unworthy to rule over us.’

And the young King bowed his head again, and prayed, and when hehad finished his prayer he rose up, and turning round he looked at themsadly.

And lo! through the painted windows came the sunlight streaming uponhim, and the sun-beams wove round him a tissued robe that was fairerthan the robe that had been fashioned for his pleasure.  The deadstaff blossomed, and bare lilies that were whiter than pearls. The dry thorn blossomed, and bare roses that were redder than rubies. Whiter than fine pearls were the lilies, and their stems were of brightsilver.  Redder than male rubies were the roses, and their leaveswere of beaten gold.

He stood there in the raiment of a king, and the gates of the jewelledshrine flew open, and from the crystal of the many-rayed monstranceshone a marvellous and mystical light.  He stood there in a king’sraiment, and the Glory of God filled the place, and the saints in theircarven niches seemed to move.  In the fair raiment of a king hestood before them, and the organ pealed out its music, and the trumpetersblew upon their trumpets, and the singing boys sang.

And the people fell upon their knees in awe, and the nobles sheathedtheir swords and did homage, and the Bishop’s face grew pale,and his hands trembled.  ‘A greater than I hath crowned thee,’he cried, and he knelt before him.

And the young King came down from the high altar, and passed homethrough the midst of the people.  But no man dared look upon hisface, for it was like the face of an angel.—The Young King.

THE KING OF SPAIN

From a window in the palace the sad melancholy King watched them. Behind him stood his brother, Don Pedro of Aragon, whom he hated, andhis confessor, the Grand Inquisitor of Granada, sat by his side. Sadder even than usual was the King, for as he looked at the Infantabowing with childish gravity to the assembling counters, or laughingbehind her fan at the grim Duchess of Albuquerque who always accompaniedher, he thought of the young Queen, her mother, who but a short timebefore—so it seemed to him—had come from the gay countryof France, and had withered away in the sombre splendour of the Spanishcourt, dying just six months after the birth of her child, and beforeshe had seen the almonds blossom twice in the orchard, or plucked thesecond year’s fruit from the old gnarled fig-tree that stood inthe centre of the now grass-grown courtyard.  So great had beenhis love for her that he had not suffered even the grave to hide herfrom him.  She had been embalmed by a Moorish physician, who inreturn for this service had been granted his life, which for heresyand suspicion of magical practices had been already forfeited, men said,to the Holy Office, and her body was still lying on its tapestried bierin the black marble chapel of the Palace, just as the monks had borneher in on that windy March day nearly twelve years before.  Onceevery month the King, wrapped in a dark cloak and with a muffled lanternin his hand, went in and knelt by her side calling out, ‘Mireina!  Mi reina!’ and sometimes breaking throughthe formal etiquette that in Spain governs every separate action oflife, and sets limits even to the sorrow of a King, he would clutchat the pale jewelled hands in a wild agony of grief, and try to wakeby his mad kisses the cold painted face.

To-day he seemed to see her again, as he had seen her first at theCastle of Fontainebleau, when he was but fifteen years of age, and shestill younger.  They had been formally betrothed on that occasionby the Papal Nuncio in the presence of the French King and all the Court,and he had returned to the Escurial bearing with him a little ringletof yellow hair, and the memory of two childish lips bending down tokiss his hand as he stepped into his carriage.  Later on had followedthe marriage, hastily performed at Burgos, a small town on the frontierbetween the two countries, and the grand public entry into Madrid withthe customary celebration of high mass at the Church of La Atocha, anda more than usually solemn auto-da-fé, in which nearlythree hundred heretics, amongst whom were many Englishmen, had beendelivered over to the secular arm to be burned.

Certainly he had loved her madly, and to the ruin, many thought,of his country, then at war with England for the possession of the empireof the New World.  He had hardly ever permitted her to be out ofhis sight; for her, he had forgotten, or seemed to have forgotten, allgrave affairs of State; and, with that terrible blindness that passionbrings upon its servants, he had failed to notice that the elaborateceremonies by which he sought to please her did but aggravate the strangemalady from which she suffered.  When she died he was, for a time,like one bereft of reason.  Indeed, there is no doubt but thathe would have formally abdicated and retired to the great Trappist monasteryat Granada, of which he was already titular Prior, had he not been afraidto leave the little Infanta at the mercy of his brother, whose cruelty,even in Spain, was notorious, and who was suspected by many of havingcaused the Queen’s death by means of a pair of poisoned glovesthat he had presented to her on the occasion of her visiting his castlein Aragon.  Even after the expiration of the three years of publicmourning that he had ordained throughout his whole dominions by royaledict, he would never suffer his ministers to speak about any new alliance,and when the Emperor himself sent to him, and offered him the hand ofthe lovely Archduchess of Bohemia, his niece, in marriage, he bade theambassadors tell their master that the King of Spain was already weddedto Sorrow, and that though she was but a barren bride he loved her betterthan Beauty; an answer that cost his crown the rich provinces of theNetherlands, which soon after, at the Emperor’s instigation, revoltedagainst him under the leadership of some fanatics of the Reformed Church.—TheBirthday of the Infranta.

A BULL FIGHT

A procession of noble boys, fantastically dressed as toreadors,came out to meet her, and the young Count of Tierra-Nueva, a wonderfullyhandsome lad of about fourteen years of age, uncovering his head withall the grace of a born hidalgo and grandee of Spain, led her solemnlyin to a little gilt and ivory chair that was placed on a raised daisabove the arena.  The children grouped themselves all round, flutteringtheir big fans and whispering to each other, and Don Pedro and the GrandInquisitor stood laughing at the entrance.  Even the Duchess—theCamerera-Mayor as she was called—a thin, hard-featured woman witha yellow ruff, did not look quite so bad-tempered as usual, and somethinglike a chill smile flitted across her wrinkled face and twitched herthin bloodless lips.

It certainly was a marvellous bull-fight, and much nicer, the Infantathought, than the real bull-fight that she had been brought to see atSeville, on the occasion of the visit of the Duke of Parma to her father. Some of the boys pranced about on richly-caparisoned hobby-horses brandishinglong javelins with gay streamers of bright ribands attached to them;others went on foot waving their scarlet cloaks before the bull, andvaulting lightly over the barrier when he charged them; and as for thebull himself, he was just like a live bull, though he was only madeof wicker-work and stretched hide, and sometimes insisted on runninground the arena on his hind legs, which no live bull ever dreams ofdoing.  He made a splendid fight of it too, and the children gotso excited that they stood up upon the benches, and waved their lacehandkerchiefs and cried out: Bravo toro!  Bravo toro!just as sensibly as if they had been grown-up people.  At last,however, after a prolonged combat, during which several of the hobby-horseswere gored through and through, and, their riders dismounted, the youngCount of Tierra-Nueva brought the bull to his knees, and having obtainedpermission from the Infanta to give the coup de grâce,he plunged his wooden sword into the neck of the animal with such violencethat the head came right off, and disclosed the laughing face of littleMonsieur de Lorraine, the son of the French Ambassador at Madrid.

The arena was then cleared amidst much applause, and the dead hobby-horsesdragged solemnly away by two Moorish pages in yellow and black liveries,and after a short interlude, during which a French posture-master performedupon the tightrope, some Italian puppets appeared in the semi-classicaltragedy of Sophonisbaon the stage of a small theatre that hadbeen built up for the purpose.  They acted so well, and their gestureswere so extremely natural, that at the close of the play the eyes ofthe Infanta were quite dim with tears.  Indeed some of the childrenreally cried, and had to be comforted with sweetmeats, and the GrandInquisitor himself was so affected that he could not help saying toDon Pedro that it seemed to him intolerable that things made simplyout of wood and coloured wax, and worked mechanically by wires, shouldbe so unhappy and meet with such terrible misfortunes.—TheBirthday of the Infanta.

THE THRONE ROOM

It was a throne-room, used for the reception of foreign ambassadors,when the King, which of late had not been often, consented to give thema personal audience; the same room in which, many years before, envoyshad appeared from England to make arrangements for the marriage of theirQueen, then one of the Catholic sovereigns of Europe, with the Emperor’seldest son.  The hangings were of gilt Cordovan leather, and aheavy gilt chandelier with branches for three hundred wax lights hungdown from the black and white ceiling.  Underneath a great canopyof gold cloth, on which the lions and towers of Castile were broideredin seed pearls, stood the throne itself, covered with a rich pall ofblack velvet studded with silver tulips and elaborately fringed withsilver and pearls.  On the second step of the throne was placedthe kneeling-stool of the Infanta, with its cushion of cloth of silvertissue, and below that again, and beyond the limit of the canopy, stoodthe chair for the Papal Nuncio, who alone had the right to be seatedin the King’s presence on the occasion of any public ceremonial,and whose Cardinal’s hat, with its tangled scarlet tassels, layon a purple tabouretin front.  On the wall, facing thethrone, hung a life-sized portrait of Charles V. in hunting dress, witha great mastiff by his side, and a picture of Philip II. receiving thehomage of the Netherlands occupied the centre of the other wall. Between the windows stood a black ebony cabinet, inlaid with platesof ivory, on which the figures from Holbein’s Dance of Death hadbeen graved—by the hand, some said, of that famous master himself.

But the little Dwarf cared nothing for all this magnificence. He would not have given his rose for all the pearls on the canopy, norone white petal of his rose for the throne itself.  What he wantedwas to see the Infanta before she went down to the pavilion, and toask her to come away with him when he had finished his dance. Here, in the Palace, the air was close and heavy, but in the forestthe wind blew free, and the sunlight with wandering hands of gold movedthe tremulous leaves aside.  There were flowers, too, in the forest,not so splendid, perhaps, as the flowers in the garden, but more sweetlyscented for all that; hyacinths in early spring that flooded with wavingpurple the cool glens, and grassy knolls; yellow primroses that nestledin little clumps round the gnarled roots of the oak-trees; bright celandine,and blue speedwell, and irises lilac and gold.  There were greycatkins on the hazels, and the foxgloves drooped with the weight oftheir dappled bee-haunted cells.  The chestnut had its spires ofwhite stars, and the hawthorn its pallid moons of beauty.  Yes:surely she would come if he could only find her!  She would comewith him to the fair forest, and all day long he would dance for herdelight.  A smile lit up his eyes at the thought, and he passedinto the next room.

Of all the rooms this was the brightest and the most beautiful. The walls were covered with a pink-flowered Lucca damask, patternedwith birds and dotted with dainty blossoms of silver; the furniturewas of massive silver, festooned with florid wreaths, and swinging Cupids;in front of the two large fire-places stood great screens broideredwith parrots and peacocks, and the floor, which was of sea-green onyx,seemed to stretch far away into the distance.  Nor was he alone. Standing under the shadow of the doorway, at the extreme end of theroom, he saw a little figure watching him.  His heart trembled,a cry of joy broke from his lips, and he moved out into the sunlight. As he did so, the figure moved out also, and he saw it plainly.—TheBirthday of the Infanta.

A PROTECTED COUNTRY

‘The kings of each city levied tolls on us, but would not sufferus to enter their gates.  They threw us bread over the walls, littlemaize-cakes baked in honey and cakes of fine flour filled with dates. For every hundred baskets we gave them a bead of amber.

‘When the dwellers in the villages saw us coming, they poisonedthe wells and fled to the hill-summits.  We fought with the Magadaewho are born old, and grow younger and younger every year, and die whenthey are little children; and with the Laktroi who say that they arethe sons of tigers, and paint themselves yellow and black; and withthe Aurantes who bury their dead on the tops of trees, and themselveslive in dark caverns lest the Sun, who is their god, should slay them;and with the Krimnians who worship a crocodile, and give it earringsof green glass, and feed it with butter and fresh fowls; and with theAgazonbae, who are dog-faced; and with the Sibans, who have horses’feet, and run more swiftly than horses.  A third of our companydied in battle, and a third died of want.  The rest murmured againstme, and said that I had brought them an evil fortune.  I took ahorned adder from beneath a stone and let it sting me.  When theysaw that I did not sicken they grew afraid.

‘In the fourth month we reached the city of Illel.  Itwas night-time when we came to the grove that is outside the walls,and the air was sultry, for the Moon was travelling in Scorpion. We took the ripe pomegranates from the trees, and brake them, and dranktheir sweet juices.  Then we lay down on our carpets, and waitedfor the dawn.

‘And at dawn we rose and knocked at the gate of the city. It was wrought out of red bronze, and carved with sea-dragons and dragonsthat have wings.  The guards looked down from the battlements andasked us our business.  The interpreter of the caravan answeredthat we had come from the island of Syria with much merchandise. They took hostages, and told us that they would open the gate to usat noon, and bade us tarry till then.

‘When it was noon they opened the gate, and as we entered inthe people came crowding out of the houses to look at us, and a crierwent round the city crying through a shell.  We stood in the market-place,and the negroes uncorded the bales of figured cloths and opened thecarved chests of sycamore.  And when they had ended their task,the merchants set forth their strange wares, the waxed linen from Egyptand the painted linen from the country of the Ethiops, the purple spongesfrom Tyre and the blue hangings from Sidon, the cups of cold amber andthe fine vessels of glass and the curious vessels of burnt clay. From the roof of a house a company of women watched us.  One ofthem wore a mask of gilded leather.

‘And on the first day the priests came and bartered with us,and on the second day came the nobles, and on the third day came thecraftsmen and the slaves.  And this is their custom with all merchantsas long as they tarry in the city.

‘And we tarried for a moon, and when the moon was waning, Iwearied and wandered away through the streets of the city and came tothe garden of its god.  The priests in their yellow robes movedsilently through the green trees, and on a pavement of black marblestood the rose-red house in which the god had his dwelling.  Itsdoors were of powdered lacquer, and bulls and peacocks were wroughton them in raised and polished gold.  The tilted roof was of sea-greenporcelain, and the jutting eaves were festooned with little bells. When the white doves flew past, they struck the bells with their wingsand made them tinkle.

‘In front of the temple was a pool of clear water paved withveined onyx.  I lay down beside it, and with my pale fingers Itouched the broad leaves.  One of the priests came towards me andstood behind me.  He had sandals on his feet, one of soft serpent-skinand the other of birds’ plumage.  On his head was a mitreof black felt decorated with silver crescents.  Seven yellows werewoven into his robe, and his frizzed hair was stained with antimony.

‘After a little while he spake to me, and asked me my desire.

‘I told him that my desire was to see the god.’—TheFisherman and His Soul.

THE BLACKMAILING OF THE EMPEROR

‘As soon as the man was dead the Emperor turned to me, andwhen he had wiped away the bright sweat from his brow with a littlenapkin of purfled and purple silk, he said to me, “Art thou aprophet, that I may not harm thee, or the son of a prophet, that I cando thee no hurt?  I pray thee leave my city to-night, for whilethou art in it I am no longer its lord.”

‘And I answered him, “I will go for half of thy treasure. Give me half of thy treasure, and I will go away.”

‘He took me by the hand, and led me out into the garden. When the captain of the guard saw me, he wondered.  When the eunuchssaw me, their knees shook and they fell upon the ground in fear.

‘There is a chamber in the palace that has eight walls of redporphyry, and a brass-sealed ceiling hung with lamps.  The Emperortouched one of the walls and it opened, and we passed down a corridorthat was lit with many torches.  In niches upon each side stoodgreat wine-jars filled to the brim with silver pieces.  When wereached the centre of the corridor the Emperor spake the word that maynot be spoken, and a granite door swung back on a secret spring, andhe put his hands before his face lest his eyes should be dazzled.

‘Thou couldst not believe how marvellous a place it was. There were huge tortoise-shells full of pearls, and hollowed moonstonesof great size piled up with red rubies.  The gold was stored incoffers of elephant-hide, and the gold-dust in leather bottles. There were opals and sapphires, the former in cups of crystal, and thelatter in cups of jade.  Round green emeralds were ranged in orderupon thin plates of ivory, and in one corner were silk bags filled,some with turquoise-stones, and others with beryls.  The ivoryhorns were heaped with purple amethysts, and the horns of brass withchalcedonies and sards.  The pillars, which were of cedar, werehung with strings of yellow lynx-stones.  In the flat oval shieldsthere were carbuncles, both wine-coloured and coloured like grass. And yet I have told thee but a tithe of what was there.

‘And when the Emperor had taken away his hands from beforehis face he said to me: “This is my house of treasure, and halfthat is in it is thine, even as I promised to thee.  And I willgive thee camels and camel drivers, and they shall do thy bidding andtake thy share of the treasure to whatever part of the world thou desirestto go.  And the thing shall be done to-night, for I would not thatthe Sun, who is my father, should see that there is in my city a manwhom I cannot slay.”

‘But I answered him, “The gold that is here is thine,and the silver also is thine, and thine are the precious jewels andthe things of price.  As for me, I have no need of these. Nor shall I take aught from thee but that little ring that thou weareston the finger of thy hand.”

‘And the Emperor frowned.  “It is but a ring oflead,” he cried, “nor has it any value.  Thereforetake thy half of the treasure and go from my city.”

‘“Nay,” I answered, “but I will take noughtbut that leaden ring, for I know what is written within it, and forwhat purpose.”

‘And the Emperor trembled, and besought me and said, “Takeall the treasure and go from my city.  The half that is mine shallbe thine also.”

‘And I did a strange thing, but what I did matters not, forin a cave that is but a day’s journey from this place have, Ihidden the Ring of Riches.  It is but a day’s journey fromthis place, and it waits for thy coming.  He who has this Ringis richer than all the kings of the world.  Come therefore andtake it, and the world’s riches shall be thine.’—TheFisherman and His Soul.

COVENT GARDEN

Where he went he hardly knew.  He had a dim memory of wanderingthrough a labyrinth of sordid houses, of being lost in a giant web ofsombre streets, and it was bright dawn when he found himself at lastin Piccadilly Circus.  As he strolled home towards Belgrave Square,he met the great waggons on their way to Covent Garden.  The white-smockedcarters, with their pleasant sunburnt faces and coarse curly hair, strodesturdily on, cracking their whips, and calling out now and then to eachother; on the back of a huge grey horse, the leader of a jangling team,sat a chubby boy, with a bunch of primroses in his battered hat, keepingtight hold of the mane with his little hands, and laughing; and thegreat piles of vegetables looked like masses of jade against the morningsky, like masses of green jade against the pink petals of some marvellousrose.  Lord Arthur felt curiously affected, he could not tell why. There was something in the dawn’s delicate loveliness that seemedto him inexpressibly pathetic, and he thought of all the days that breakin beauty, and that set in storm.  These rustics, too, with theirrough, good-humoured voices, and their nonchalant ways, what a strangeLondon they saw!  A London free from the sin of night and the smokeof day, a pallid, ghost-like city, a desolate town of tombs!  Hewondered what they thought of it, and whether they knew anything ofits splendour and its shame, of its fierce, fiery-coloured joys, andits horrible hunger, of all it makes and mars from morn to eve. Probably it was to them merely a mart where they brought their fruitsto sell, and where they tarried for a few hours at most, leaving thestreets still silent, the houses still asleep.  It gave him pleasureto watch them as they went by.  Rude as they were, with their heavy,hob-nailed shoes, and their awkward gait, they brought a little of aready with them.  He felt that they had lived with Nature, andthat she had taught them peace.  He envied them all that they didnot know.

By the time he had reached Belgrave Square the sky was a faint blue,and the birds were beginning to twitter in the gardens.—LordArthur Savile’s Crime.

A LETTER FROM MISS JANE PERCY TO HER AUNT

THE DEANERY, CHICHESTER,

27th May.

My Dearest Aunt,

Thank you so much for the flannel for the Dorcas Society, and alsofor the gingham.  I quite agree with you that it is nonsense theirwanting to wear pretty things, but everybody is so Radical and irreligiousnowadays, that it is difficult to make them see that they should nottry and dress like the upper classes.  I am sure I don’tknow what we are coming to.  As papa has often said in his sermons,we live in an age of unbelief.

We have had great fun over a clock that an unknown admirer sent papalast Thursday.  It arrived in a wooden box from London, carriagepaid, and papa feels it must have been sent by some one who had readhis remarkable sermon, ‘Is Licence Liberty?’ for on thetop of the clock was a figure of a woman, with what papa said was thecap of Liberty on her head.  I didn’t think it very becomingmyself, but papa said it was historical, so I suppose it is all right. Parker unpacked it, and papa put it on the mantelpiece in the library,and we were all sitting there on Friday morning, when just as the clockstruck twelve, we heard a whirring noise, a little puff of smoke camefrom the pedestal of the figure, and the goddess of Liberty fell off,and broke her nose on the fender!  Maria was quite alarmed, butit looked so ridiculous, that James and I went off into fits of laughter,and even papa was amused.  When we examined it, we found it wasa sort of alarum clock, and that, if you set it to a particular hour,and put some gunpowder and a cap under a little hammer, it went offwhenever you wanted.  Papa said it must not remain in the library,as it made a noise, so Reggie carried it away to the schoolroom, anddoes nothing but have small explosions all day long.  Do you thinkArthur would like one for a wedding present?  I suppose they arequite fashionable in London.  Papa says they should do a greatdeal of good, as they show that Liberty can’t last, but must falldown.  Papa says Liberty was invented at the time of the FrenchRevolution.  How awful it seems!

I have now to go to the Dorcas, where I will read them your mostinstructive letter.  How true, dear aunt, your idea is, that intheir rank of life they should wear what is unbecoming.  I mustsay it is absurd, their anxiety about dress, when there are so manymore important things in this world, and in the next.  I am soglad your flowered poplin turned out so well, and that your lace wasnot torn.  I am wearing my yellow satin, that you so kindly gaveme, at the Bishop’s on Wednesday, and think it will look all right. Would you have bows or not?  Jennings says that every one wearsbows now, and that the underskirt should be frilled.  Reggie hasjust had another explosion, and papa has ordered the clock to be sentto the stables.  I don’t think papa likes it so much as hedid at first, though he is very flattered at being sent such a prettyand ingenious toy.  It shows that people read his sermons, andprofit by them.

Papa sends his love, in which James, and Reggie, and Maria all unite,and, hoping that Uncle Cecil’s gout is better, believe me, dearaunt, ever your affectionate niece,

JANE PERCY.

PS.—Do tell me about the bows.  Jennings insists theyare the fashion.—Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime.

THE TRIUMPH OF AMERICAN ‘HUMOR’

At half-past ten he heard the family going to bed.  For sometime he was disturbed by wild shrieks of laughter from the twins, who,with the light-hearted gaiety of schoolboys, were evidently amusingthemselves before they retired to rest, but at a quarter past elevenall was still, and, as midnight sounded, he sallied forth.  Theowl beat against the window panes, the raven croaked from the old yew-tree,and the wind wandered moaning round the house like a lost soul; butthe Otis family slept unconscious of their doom, and high above therain and storm he could hear the steady snoring of the Minister forthe United States.  He stepped stealthily out of the wainscoting,with an evil smile on his cruel, wrinkled mouth, and the moon hid herface in a cloud as he stole past the great oriel window, where his ownarms and those of his murdered wife were blazoned in azure and gold. On and on he glided, like an evil shadow, the very darkness seemingto loathe him as he passed.  Once he thought he heard somethingcall, and stopped; but it was only the baying of a dog from the RedFarm, and he went on, muttering strange sixteenth-century curses, andever and anon brandishing the rusty dagger in the midnight air. Finally he reached the corner of the passage that led to luckless Washington’sroom.  For a moment he paused there, the wind blowing his longgrey locks about his head, and twisting into grotesque and fantasticfolds the nameless horror of the dead man’s shroud.  Thenthe clock struck the quarter, and he felt the time was come.  Hechuckled to himself, and turned the corner; but no sooner had he doneso, than, with a piteous wail of terror, he fell back, and hid his blanchedface in his long, bony hands.  Right in front of him was standinga horrible spectre, motionless as a carven image, and monstrous as amadman’s dream!  Its head was bald and burnished; its faceround, and fat, and white; and hideous laughter seemed to have writhedits features into an eternal grin.  From the eyes streamed raysof scarlet light, the mouth was a wide well of fire, and a hideous garment,like to his own, swathed with its silent snows the Titan form. On its breast was a placard with strange writing in antique characters,some scroll of shame it seemed, some record of wild sins, some awfulcalendar of crime, and, with its right hand, it bore aloft a falchionof gleaming steel.

Never having seen a ghost before, he naturally was terribly frightened,and, after a second hasty glance at the awful phantom, he fled backto his room, tripping up in his long winding-sheet as he sped down thecorridor, and finally dropping the rusty dagger into the Minister’sjack-boots, where it was found in the morning by the butler.  Oncein the privacy of his own apartment, he flung himself down on a smallpallet-bed, and hid his face under the clothes.  After a time,however, the brave old Canterville spirit asserted itself, and he determinedto go and speak to the other ghost as soon as it was daylight. Accordingly, just as the dawn was touching the hills with silver, hereturned towards the spot where he had first laid eyes on the grislyphantom, feeling that, after all, two ghosts were better than one, andthat, by the aid of his new friend, he might safely grapple with thetwins.  On reaching the spot, however, a terrible sight met hisgaze.  Something had evidently happened to the spectre, for thelight had entirely faded from its hollow eyes, the gleaming falchionhad fallen from its hand, and it was leaning up against the wall ina strained and uncomfortable attitude.  He rushed forward and seizedit in his arms, when, to his horror, the head slipped off and rolledon the floor, the body assumed a recumbent posture, and he found himselfclasping a white dimity bed-curtain, with a sweeping-brush, a kitchencleaver, and a hollow turnip lying at his feet!—The CantervilleGhost.

THE GARDEN OF DEATH

‘Far away beyond the pine-woods,’ he answered, in a lowdreamy voice, ‘there is a little garden.  There the grassgrows long and deep, there are the great white stars of the hemlockflower, there the nightingale sings all night long.  All nightlong he sings, and the cold, crystal moon looks down, and the yew-treespreads out its giant arms over the sleepers.’

Virginia’s eyes grew dim with tears, and she hid her face inher hands.

‘You mean the Garden of Death,’ she whispered.

‘Yes, Death.  Death must be so beautiful.  To liein the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head,and listen to silence.  To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.  You can helpme.  You can open for me the portals of Death’s house, forLove is always with you, and Love is stronger than Death is.’

Virginia trembled, a cold shudder ran through her, and for a fewmoments there was silence.  She felt as if she was in a terribledream.

Then the Ghost spoke again, and his voice sounded like the sighingof the wind.

‘Have you ever read the old prophecy on the library window?’

‘Oh, often,’ cried the little girl, looking up; ‘Iknow it quite well.  It is painted in curious black letters, andit is difficult to read.  There are only six lines:

When a golden girl can win
Prayer from out the lips of sin,
When the barren almond bears,
And a little child gives away its tears,
Then shall all the house be still
And peace come to Canterville.

But I don’t know what they mean.’

‘They mean,’ he said sadly, ‘that you must weepfor me for my sins, because I have no tears, and pray with me for mysoul, because I have no faith, and then, if you have always been sweet,and good, and gentle, the Angel of Death will have mercy on me. You will see fearful shapes in darkness, and wicked voices will whisperin your ear, but they will not harm you, for against the purity of alittle child the powers of Hell cannot prevail.’

Virginia made no answer, and the Ghost wrung his hands in wild despairas he looked down at her bowed golden head.  Suddenly she stoodup, very pale, and with a strange light in her eyes.  ‘Iam not afraid,’ she said firmly, ‘and I will ask the Angelto have mercy on you.’

He rose from his seat with a faint cry of joy, and taking her handbent over it with old-fashioned grace and kissed it.  His fingerswere as cold as ice, and his lips burned like fire, but Virginia didnot falter, as he led her across the dusky room.  On the fadedgreen tapestry were broidered little huntsmen.  They blew theirtasselled horns and with their tiny hands waved to her to go back. ‘Go back! little Virginia,’ they cried, ‘go back!’but the Ghost clutched her hand more tightly, and she shut her eyesagainst them.  Horrible animals with lizard tails, and goggle eyes,blinked at her from the carven chimney-piece, and murmured ‘Beware!little Virginia, beware! we may never see you again,’ but theGhost glided on more swiftly, and Virginia did not listen.  Whenthey reached the end of the room he stopped, and muttered some wordsshe could not understand.  She opened her eyes, and saw the wallslowly fading away like a mist, and a great black cavern in front ofher.  A bitter cold wind swept round them, and she felt somethingpulling at her dress.  ‘Quick, quick,’ cried the Ghost,‘or it will be too late,’ and, in a moment, the wainscotinghad closed behind them, and the Tapestry Chamber was empty.—TheCanterville Ghost.

AN ETON KIT-CAT

“Well,” said Erskine, lighting a cigarette, “Imust begin by telling you about Cyril Graham himself.  He and Iwere at the same house at Eton.  I was a year or two older thanhe was, but we were immense friends, and did all our work and all ourplay together.  There was, of course, a good deal more play thanwork, but I cannot say that I am sorry for that.  It is alwaysan advantage not to have received a sound commercial education, andwhat I learned in the playing fields at Eton has been quite as usefulto me as anything I was taught at Cambridge.  I should tell youthat Cyril’s father and mother were both dead.  They hadbeen drowned in a horrible yachting accident off the Isle of Wight. His father had been in the diplomatic service, and had married a daughter,the only daughter, in fact, of old Lord Crediton, who became Cyril’sguardian after the death of his parents.  I don’t think thatLord Crediton cared very much for Cyril.  He had never really forgivenhis daughter for marrying a man who had not a title.  He was anextraordinary old aristocrat, who swore like a costermonger, and hadthe manners of a farmer.  I remember seeing him once on Speech-day. He growled at me, gave me a sovereign, and told me not to grow up ‘adamned Radical’ like my father.  Cyril had very little affectionfor him, and was only too glad to spend most of his holidays with usin Scotland.  They never really got on together at all.  Cyrilthought him a bear, and he thought Cyril effeminate.  He was effeminate,I suppose, in some things, though he was a very good rider and a capitalfencer.  In fact he got the foils before he left Eton.  Buthe was very languid in his manner, and not a little vain of his goodlooks, and had a strong objection to football.  The two thingsthat really gave him pleasure were poetry and acting.  At Etonhe was always dressing up and reciting Shakespeare, and when he wentup to Trinity he became a member of the A.D.C. his first term. I remember I was always very jealous of his acting.  I was absurdlydevoted to him; I suppose because we were so different in some things. I was a rather awkward, weakly lad, with huge feet, and horribly freckled. Freckles run in Scotch families just as gout does in English families. Cyril used to say that of the two he preferred the gout; but he alwaysset an absurdly high value on personal appearance, and once read a paperbefore our debating society to prove that it was better to be good-lookingthan to be good.  He certainly was wonderfully handsome. People who did not like him, Philistines and college tutors, and youngmen reading for the Church, used to say that he was merely pretty; butthere was a great deal more in his face than mere prettiness. I think he was the most splendid creature I ever saw, and nothing couldexceed the grace of his movements, the charm of his manner.  Hefascinated everybody who was worth fascinating, and a great many peoplewho were not.  He was often wilful and petulant, and I used tothink him dreadfully insincere.  It was due, I think, chiefly tohis inordinate desire to please.  Poor Cyril!  I told himonce that he was contented with very cheap triumphs, but he only laughed. He was horribly spoiled.  All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.

“However, I must tell you about Cyril’s acting. You know that no actresses are allowed to play at the A.D.C.  Atleast they were not in my time.  I don’t know how it is now. Well, of course, Cyril was always cast for the girls’ parts, andwhen As You Like Itwas produced he played Rosalind.  Itwas a marvellous performance.  In fact, Cyril Graham was the onlyperfect Rosalind I have ever seen.  It would be impossible to describeto you the beauty, the delicacy, the refinement of the whole thing. It made an immense sensation, and the horrid little theatre, as it wasthen, was crowded every night.  Even when I read the play now Ican’t help thinking of Cyril.  It might have been writtenfor him.  The next term he took his degree, and came to Londonto read for the diplomatic.  But he never did any work.  Hespent his days in reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and his eveningsat the theatre.  He was, of course, wild to go on the stage. It was all that I and Lord Crediton could do to prevent him.  Perhapsif he had gone on the stage he would be alive now.  It is alwaysa silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutelyfatal.  I hope you will never fall into that error.  If youdo, you will be sorry for it.”—The Portrait of Mr. W.H.

MRS. ERLYNNE EXERCISES THE PREROGATIVE OF A GRANDMOTHER

Lady Windermere, before Heaven your husband is guiltless of all offencetowards you!  And I—I tell you that had it ever occurredto me that such a monstrous suspicion would have entered your mind,I would have died rather than have crossed your life or his—oh!died, gladly died!  Believe what you choose about me.  I amnot worth a moment’s sorrow.  But don’t spoil yourbeautiful young life on my account!  You don’t know whatmay be in store for you, unless you leave this house at once. You don’t know what it is to fall into the pit, to be despised,mocked, abandoned, sneered at—to be an outcast! to find the doorshut against one, to have to creep in by hideous byways, afraid everymoment lest the mask should be stripped from one’s face, and allthe while to hear the laughter, the horrible laughter of the world,a thing more tragic than all the tears the world has ever shed. You don’t know what it is.  One pays for one’s sin,and then one pays again, and all one’s life one pays.  Youmust never know that.—As for me, if suffering be an expiation,then at this moment I have expiated all my faults, whatever they havebeen; for to-night you have made a heart in one who had it not, madeit and broken it.—But let that pass.  I may have wreckedmy own life, but I will not let you wreck yours.  You—why,you are a mere girl, you would be lost.  You haven’t gotthe kind of brains that enables a woman to get back.  You haveneither the wit nor the courage.  You couldn’t stand dishonour! No!  Go back, Lady Windermere, to the husband who loves you, whomyou love.  You have a child, Lady Windermere.  Go back tothat child who even now, in pain or in joy, may be calling to you. God gave you that child.  He will require from you that you makehis life fine, that you watch over him.  What answer will you maketo God if his life is ruined through you?  Back to your house,Lady Windermere—your husband loves you!  He has never swervedfor a moment from the love he bears you.  But even if he had athousand loves, you must stay with your child.  If he was harshto you, you must stay with your child.  If he ill-treated you,you must stay with your child.  If he abandoned you, your placeis with your child.—Lady Windermere’s Fan.

MOTHERHOOD MORE THAN MARRIAGE

Men don’t understand what mothers are.  I am no differentfrom other women except in the wrong done me and the wrong I did, andmy very heavy punishments and great disgrace.  And yet, to bearyou I had to look on death.  To nurture you I had to wrestle withit.  Death fought with me for you.  All women have to fightwith death to keep their children.  Death, being childless, wantsour children from us.  Gerald, when you were naked I clothed you,when you were hungry I gave you food.  Night and day all that longwinter I tended you.  No office is too mean, no care too lowlyfor the thing we women love—and oh! how Iloved you. Not Hannah, Samuel more.  And you needed love, for you were weakly,and only love could have kept you alive.  Only love can keep anyone alive.  And boys are careless often and without thinking givepain, and we always fancy that when they come to man’s estateand know us better they will repay us.  But it is not so. The world draws them from our side, and they make friends with whomthey are happier than they are with us, and have amusements from whichwe are barred, and interests that are not ours: and they are unjustto us often, for when they find life bitter they blame us for it, andwhen they find it sweet we do not taste its sweetness with them . .. You made many friends and went into their houses and were glad withthem, and I, knowing my secret, did not dare to follow, but stayed athome and closed the door, shut out the sun and sat in darkness. What should I have done in honest households?  My past was everwith me. . . . And you thought I didn’t care for the pleasantthings of life.  I tell you I longed for them, but did not dareto touch them, feeling I had no right.  You thought I was happierworking amongst the poor.  That was my mission, you imagined. It was not, but where else was I to go?  The sick do not ask ifthe hand that smooths their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if thelips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin.  It wasyou I thought of all the time; I gave to them the love you did not need:lavished on them a love that was not theirs . . . And you thought Ispent too much of my time in going to Church, and in Church duties. But where else could I turn?  God’s house is the only housewhere sinners are made welcome, and you were always in my heart, Gerald,too much in my heart.  For, though day after day, at morn or evensong,I have knelt in God’s house, I have never repented of my sin. How could I repent of my sin when you, my love, were its fruit! Even now that you are bitter to me I cannot repent.  I do not. You are more to me than innocence.  I would rather be your mother—oh!much rather!—than have been always pure . . . Oh, don’tyou see? don’t you understand?  It is my dishonour that hasmade you so dear to me.  It is my disgrace that has bound you soclosely to me.  It is the price I paid for you—the priceof soul and body—that makes me love you as I do.  Oh, don’task me to do this horrible thing.  Child of my shame, be stillthe child of my shame!—A Woman of No Importance.

THE DAMNABLE IDEAL

Why can’t you women love us, faults and all?  Why do youplace us on monstrous pedestals?  We have all feet of clay, womenas well as men; but when we men love women, we love them knowing theirweaknesses, their follies, their imperfections, love them all the more,it may be, for that reason.  It is not the perfect, but the imperfect,who have need of love.  It is when we are wounded by our own hands,or by the hands of others, that love should come to cure us—elsewhat use is love at all?  All sins, except a sin against itself,Love should forgive.  All lives, save loveless lives, true Loveshould pardon.  A man’s love is like that.  It is wider,larger, more human than a woman’s.  Women think that theyare making ideals of men.  What they are making of us are falseidols merely.  You made your false idol of me, and I had not thecourage to come down, show you my wounds, tell you my weaknesses. I was afraid that I might lose your love, as I have lost it now. And so, last night you ruined my life for me—yes, ruined it! What this woman asked of me was nothing compared to what she offeredto me.  She offered security, peace, stability.  The sin ofmy youth, that I had thought was buried, rose up in front of me, hideous,horrible, with its hands at my throat.  I could have killed itfor ever, sent it back into its tomb, destroyed its record, burned theone witness against me.  You prevented me.  No one but you,you know it.  And now what is there before me but public disgrace,ruin, terrible shame, the mockery of the world, a lonely dishonouredlife, a lonely dishonoured death, it may be, some day?  Let womenmake no more ideals of men! let them not put them on alters and bowbefore them, or they may ruin other lives as completely as you—youwhom I have so wildly loved—have ruined mine!—An IdealHusband.

FROM A REJECTED PRIZE-ESSAY

Nations may not have missions but they certainly have functions. And the function of ancient Italy was not merely to give us what isstatical in our institutions and rational in our law, but to blend intoone elemental creed the spiritual aspirations of Aryan and of Semite. Italy was not a pioneer in intellectual progress, nor a motive powerin the evolution of thought.  The owl of the goddess of Wisdomtraversed over the whole land and found nowhere a resting-place. The dove, which is the bird of Christ, flew straight to the city ofRome and the new reign began.  It was the fashion of early Italianpainters to represent in mediæval costume the soldiers who watchedover the tomb of Christ, and this, which was the result of the frankanachronism of all true art, may serve to us as an allegory.  Forit was in vain that the Middle Ages strove to guard the buried spiritof progress.  When the dawn of the Greek spirit arose, the sepulchrewas empty, the grave-clothes laid aside.  Humanity had risen fromthe dead.

The study of Greek, it has been well said, implies the birth of criticism,comparison and research.  At the opening of that education of modernby ancient thought which we call the Renaissance, it was the words ofAristotle which sent Columbus sailing to the New World, while a fragmentof Pythagorean astronomy set Copernicus thinking on that train of reasoningwhich has revolutionised the whole position of our planet in the universe. Then it was seen that the only meaning of progress is a return to Greekmodes of thought.  The monkish hymns which obscured the pages ofGreek manuscripts were blotted out, the splendours of a new method wereunfolded to the world, and out of the melancholy sea of mediævalismrose the free spirit of man in all that splendour of glad adolescence,when the bodily powers seem quickened by a new vitality, when the eyesees more clearly than its wont and the mind apprehends what was beforetimehidden from it.  To herald the opening of the sixteenth century,from the little Venetian printing press came forth all the great authorsof antiquity, each bearing on the title-page the words Αλδοςο ΜανουτιοςΡωμαιος καιΦιλελλην; words which mayserve to remind us with what wondrous prescience Polybius saw the world’sfate when he foretold the material sovereignty of Roman institutionsand exemplified in himself the intellectual empire of Greece.

The course of the study of the spirit of historical criticism hasnot been a profitless investigation into modes and forms of thoughtnow antiquated and of no account.  The only spirit which is entirelyremoved from us is the mediæval; the Greek spirit is essentiallymodern.  The introduction of the comparative method of researchwhich has forced history to disclose its secrets belongs in a measureto us.  Ours, too, is a more scientific knowledge of philologyand the method of survival.  Nor did the ancients know anythingof the doctrine of averages or of crucial instances, both of which methodshave proved of such importance in modern criticism, the one adding amost important proof of the statical elements of history, and exemplifyingthe influences of all physical surroundings on the life of man; theother, as in the single instance of the Moulin Quignon skull, servingto create a whole new science of prehistoric archæology and tobring us back to a time when man was coeval with the stone age, themammoth and the woolly rhinoceros.  But, except these, we haveadded no new canon or method to the science of historical criticism. Across the drear waste of a thousand years the Greek and the modernspirit join hands.

In the torch race which the Greek boys ran from the Cerameician fieldof death to the home of the goddess of Wisdom, not merely he who firstreached the goal but he also who first started with the torch aflamereceived a prize.  In the Lampadephoria of civilisation and freethought let us not forget to render due meed of honour to those whofirst lit that sacred flame, the increasing splendour of which lightsour footsteps to the far-off divine event of the attainment of perfecttruth.—The Rise of Historical Criticism.

THE POSSIBILITIES OF THE USEFUL

There are two kinds of men in the world, two great creeds, two differentforms of natures: men to whom the end of life is action, and men towhom the end of life is thought.  As regards the latter, who seekfor experience itself and not for the fruits of experience, who mustburn always with one of the passions of this fiery-coloured world, whofind life interesting not for its secret but for its situations, forits pulsations and not for its purpose; the passion for beauty engenderedby the decorative arts will be to them more satisfying than any politicalor religious enthusiasm, any enthusiasm for humanity, any ecstasy orsorrow for love.  For art comes to one professing primarily togive nothing but the highest quality to one’s moments, and forthose moments’ sake.  So far for those to whom the end oflife is thought.  As regards the others, who hold that life isinseparable from labour, to them should this movement be specially dear:for, if our days are barren without industry, industry without art isbarbarism.

Hewers of wood and drawers of water there must be always indeed amongus.  Our modern machinery has not much lightened the labour ofman after all: but at least let the pitcher that stands by the wellbe beautiful and surely the labour of the day will be lightened: letthe wood be made receptive of some lovely form, some gracious design,and there will come no longer discontent but joy to the toiler. For what is decoration but the worker’s expression of joy in hiswork?  And not joy merely—that is a great thing yet not enough—butthat opportunity of expressing his own individuality which, as it isthe essence of all life, is the source of all art.  ‘I havetried,’ I remember William Morris saying to me once, ‘Ihave tried to make each of my workers an artist, and when I say an artistI mean a man.’  For the worker then, handicraftsman of whateverkind he is, art is no longer to be a purple robe woven by a slave andthrown over the whitened body of a leprous king to hide and to adornthe sin of his luxury, but rather the beautiful and noble expressionof a life that has in it something beautiful and noble.—TheEnglish Renaissance of Art.

THE ARTIST

ONE evening there came into his soul the desire to fashion an imageof The Pleasure that abideth for a Moment.  And he wentforth into the world to look for bronze.  For he could think onlyin bronze.

But all the bronze of the whole world had disappeared, nor anywherein the whole world was there any bronze to be found, save only the bronzeof the image of The Sorrow that endureth for Ever.

Now this image he had himself, and with his own hands, fashioned,and had set it on the tomb of the one thing he had loved in life. On the tomb of the dead thing he had most loved had he set this imageof his own fashioning, that it might serve as a sign of the love ofman that dieth not, and a symbol of the sorrow of man that endurethfor ever.  And in the whole world there was no other bronze savethe bronze of this image.

And he took the image he had fashioned, and set it in a great furnace,and gave it to the fire.

And out of the bronze of the image of The Sorrow that endurethfor Everhe fashioned an image of The Pleasure that abideth fora Moment.—Poems in Prose.

THE DOER OF GOOD

It was night-time and He was alone.

And He saw afar-off the walls of a round city and went towards thecity.

And when He came near He heard within the city the tread of the feetof joy, and the laughter of the mouth of gladness and the loud noiseof many lutes.  And He knocked at the gate and certain of the gate-keepersopened to Him.

And He beheld a house that was of marble and had fair pillars ofmarble before it.  The pillars were hung with garlands, and withinand without there were torches of cedar.  And He entered the house.

And when He had passed through the hall of chalcedony and the hallof jasper, and reached the long hall of feasting, He saw lying on acouch of sea-purple one whose hair was crowned with red roses and whoselips were red with wine.

And He went behind him and touched him on the shoulder and said tohim, ‘Why do you live like this?’

And the young man turned round and recognised Him, and made answerand said, ‘But I was a leper once, and you healed me.  Howelse should I live?’

And He passed out of the house and went again into the street.

And after a little while He saw one whose face and raiment were paintedand whose feet were shod with pearls.  And behind her came, slowlyas a hunter, a young man who wore a cloak of two colours.  Nowthe face of the woman was as the fair face of an idol, and the eyesof the young man were bright with lust.

And He followed swiftly and touched the hand of the young man andsaid to him, ‘Why do you look at this woman and in such wise?’

And the young man turned round and recognised Him and said, ‘ButI was blind once, and you gave me sight.  At what else should Ilook?’

And He ran forward and touched the painted raiment of the woman andsaid to her, ‘Is there no other way in which to walk save theway of sin?’

And the woman turned round and recognised Him, and laughed and said,‘But you forgave me my sins, and the way is a pleasant way.’

And He passed out of the city.

And when He had passed out of the city He saw seated by the roadsidea young man who was weeping.

And He went towards him and touched the long locks of his hair andsaid to him, ‘Why are you weeping?’

And the young man looked up and recognised Him and made answer, ‘ButI was dead once, and you raised me from the dead.  What else shouldI do but weep?’—Poems in Prose.

THE DISCIPLE

When Narcissus died the pool of his pleasure changed from a cup ofsweet waters into a cup of salt tears, and the Oreads came weeping throughthe woodland that they might sing to the pool and give it comfort.

And when they saw that the pool had changed from a cup of sweet watersinto a cup of salt tears, they loosened the green tresses of their hairand cried to the pool and said, ‘We do not wonder that you shouldmourn in this manner for Narcissus, so beautiful was he.’

‘But was Narcissus beautiful?’ said the pool.

‘Who should know that better than you?’ answered theOreads.  ‘Us did he ever pass by, but you he sought for,and would lie on your banks and look down at you, and in the mirrorof your waters he would mirror his own beauty.’

And the pool answered, ‘But I loved Narcissus because, as helay on my banks and looked down at me, in the mirror of his eyes I sawever my own beauty mirrored.’—Poems in Prose.

THE MASTER

Now when the darkness came over the earth Joseph of Arimathea, havinglighted a torch of pinewood, passed down from the hill into the valley. For he had business in his own home.

And kneeling on the flint stones of the Valley of Desolation he sawa young man who was naked and weeping.  His hair was the colourof honey, and his body was as a white flower, but he had wounded hisbody with thorns and on his hair had he set ashes as a crown.

And he who had great possessions said to the young man who was nakedand weeping, ‘I do not wonder that your sorrow is so great, forsurely He was a just man.’

And the young man answered, ‘It is not for Him that I am weeping,but for myself.  I too have changed water into wine, and I havehealed the leper and given sight to the blind.  I have walked uponthe waters, and from the dwellers in the tombs I have cast out devils. I have fed the hungry in the desert where there was no food, and I haveraised the dead from their narrow houses, and at my bidding, and beforea great multitude, of people, a barren fig-tree withered away. All things that this man has done I have done also.  And yet theyhave not crucified me.’—Poems in Prose.

THE HOUSE OF JUDGMENT

And there was silence in the House of Judgment, and the Man camenaked before God.

And God opened the Book of the Life of the Man.

And God said to the Man, ‘Thy life hath been evil, and thouhast shown cruelty to those who were in need of succour, and to thosewho lacked help thou hast been bitter and hard of heart.  The poorcalled to thee and thou didst not hearken, and thine ears were closedto the cry of My afflicted.  The inheritance of the fatherlessthou didst take unto thyself, and thou didst send the foxes into thevineyard of thy neighbour’s field.  Thou didst take the breadof the children and give it to the dogs to eat, and My lepers who livedin the marshes, and were at peace and praised Me, thou didst drive forthon to the highways, and on Mine earth out of which I made thee thoudidst spill innocent blood.’

And the Man made answer and said, ‘Even so did I.’

And again God opened the Book of the Life of the Man.

And God said to the Man, ‘Thy life hath been evil, and theBeauty I have shown thou hast sought for, and the Good I have hiddenthou didst pass by.  The walls of thy chamber were painted withimages, and from the bed of thine abominations thou didst rise up tothe sound of flutes.  Thou didst build seven altars to the sinsI have suffered, and didst eat of the thing that may not be eaten, andthe purple of thy raiment was broidered with the three signs of shame. Thine idols were neither of gold nor of silver that endure, but of fleshthat dieth.  Thou didst stain their hair with perfumes and putpomegranates in their hands.  Thou didst stain their feet withsaffron and spread carpets before them.  With antimony thou didststain their eyelids and their bodies thou didst smear with myrrh. Thou didst bow thyself to the ground before them, and the thrones ofthine idols were set in the sun.  Thou didst show to the sun thyshame and to the moon thy madness.’

And the Man made answer and said, ‘Even so did I.’

And a third time God opened the Book of the Life of the Man.

And God said to the Man, ‘Evil hath been thy life, and withevil didst thou requite good, and with wrongdoing kindness.  Thehands that fed thee thou didst wound, and the breasts that gave theesuck thou didst despise.  He who came to thee with water went awaythirsting, and the outlawed men who hid thee in their tents at nightthou didst betray before dawn.  Thine enemy who spared thee thoudidst snare in an ambush, and the friend who walked with thee thou didstsell for a price, and to those who brought thee Love thou didst evergive Lust in thy turn.’

And the Man made answer and said, ‘Even so did I.’

And God closed the Book of the Life of the Man, and said, ‘SurelyI will send thee into Hell.  Even into Hell will I send thee.’

And the Man cried out, ‘Thou canst not.’

And God said to the Man, ‘Wherefore can I not send thee toHell, and for what reason?’

‘Because in Hell have I always lived,’ answered the Man.

And there was silence in the House of Judgment.

And after a space God spake, and said to the Man, ‘Seeing thatI may not send thee into Hell, surely I will send thee unto Heaven. Even unto Heaven will I send thee.’

And the Man cried out, ‘Thou canst not.’

And God said to the Man, ‘Wherefore can I not send thee untoHeaven, and for what reason?’

‘Because never, and in no place, have I been able to imagineit,’ answered the Man.

And there was silence in the House of Judgment.—Poems inProse.

THE TEACHER OF WISDOM

From his childhood he had been as one filled with the perfect knowledgeof God, and even while he was yet but a lad many of the saints, as wellas certain holy women who dwelt in the free city of his birth, had beenstirred to much wonder by the grave wisdom of his answers.

And when his parents had given him the robe and the ring of manhoodhe kissed them, and left them and went out into the world, that he mightspeak to the world about God.  For there were at that time manyin the world who either knew not God at all, or had but an incompleteknowledge of Him, or worshipped the false gods who dwell in groves andhave no care of their worshippers.

And he set his face to the sun and journeyed, walking without sandals,as he had seen the saints walk, and carrying at his girdle a leathernwallet and a little water-bottle of burnt clay.

And as he walked along the highway he was full of the joy that comesfrom the perfect knowledge of God, and he sang praises unto God withoutceasing; and after a time he reached a strange land in which there weremany cities.

And he passed through eleven cities.  And some of these citieswere in valleys, and others were by the banks of great rivers, and otherswere set on hills.  And in each city he found a disciple who lovedhim and followed him, and a great multitude also of people followedhim from each city, and the knowledge of God spread in the whole land,and many of the rulers were converted, and the priests of the templesin which there were idols found that half of their gain was gone, andwhen they beat upon their drums at noon none, or but a few, came withpeacocks and with offerings of flesh as had been the custom of the landbefore his coming.

Yet the more the people followed him, and the greater the numberof his disciples, the greater became his sorrow.  And he knew notwhy his sorrow was so great.  For he spake ever about God, andout of the fulness of that perfect knowledge of God which God had Himselfgiven to him.

And one evening he passed out of the eleventh city, which was a cityof Armenia, and his disciples and a great crowd of people followed afterhim; and he went up on to a mountain and sat down on a rock that wason the mountain, and his disciples stood round him, and the multitudeknelt in the valley.

And he bowed his head on his hands and wept, and said to his Soul,‘Why is it that I am full of sorrow and fear, and that each ofmy disciples is an enemy that walks in the noonday?’  Andhis Soul answered him and said, ‘God filled thee with the perfectknowledge of Himself, and thou hast given this knowledge away to others. The pearl of great price thou hast divided, and the vesture withoutseam thou hast parted asunder.  He who giveth away wisdom robbethhimself.  He is as one who giveth his treasure to a robber. Is not God wiser than thou art?  Who art thou to give away thesecret that God hath told thee?  I was rich once, and thou hastmade me poor.  Once I saw God, and now thou hast hidden Him fromme.’

And he wept again, for he knew that his Soul spake truth to him,and that he had given to others the perfect knowledge of God, and thathe was as one clinging to the skirts of God, and that his faith wasleaving him by reason of the number of those who believed in him.

And he said to himself, ‘I will talk no more about God. He who giveth away wisdom robbeth himself.’

And after the space of some hours his disciples came near him andbowed themselves to the ground and said, ‘Master, talk to us aboutGod, for thou hast the perfect knowledge of God, and no man save theehath this knowledge.’

And he answered them and said, ‘I will talk to you about allother things that are in heaven and on earth, but about God I will nottalk to you.  Neither now, nor at any time, will I talk to youabout God.’

And they were wroth with him and said to him, ‘Thou hast ledus into the desert that we might hearken to thee.  Wilt thou sendus away hungry, and the great multitude that thou hast made to followthee?’

And he answered them and said, ‘I will not talk to you aboutGod.’

And the multitude murmured against him and said to him, ‘Thouhast led us into the desert, and hast given us no food to eat. Talk to us about God and it will suffice us.’

But he answered them not a word.  For he knew that if he spaketo them about God he would give away his treasure.

And his disciples went away sadly, and the multitude of people returnedto their own homes.  And many died on the way.

And when he was alone he rose up and set his face to the moon, andjourneyed for seven moons, speaking to no man nor making any answer. And when the seventh moon had waned he reached that desert which isthe desert of the Great River.  And having found a cavern in whicha Centaur had once dwelt, he took it for his place of dwelling, andmade himself a mat of reeds on which to lie, and became a hermit. And every hour the Hermit praised God that He had suffered him to keepsome knowledge of Him and of His wonderful greatness.

Now, one evening, as the Hermit was seated before the cavern in whichhe had made his place of dwelling, he beheld a young man of evil andbeautiful face who passed by in mean apparel and with empty hands. Every evening with empty hands the young man passed by, and every morninghe returned with his hands full of purple and pearls.  For he wasa Robber and robbed the caravans of the merchants.

And the Hermit looked at him and pitied him.  But he spake nota word.  For he knew that he who speaks a word loses his faith.

And one morning, as the young man returned with his hands full ofpurple and pearls, he stopped and frowned and stamped his foot uponthe sand, and said to the Hermit: ‘Why do you look at me everin this manner as I pass by?  What is it that I see in your eyes? For no man has looked at me before in this manner.  And the thingis a thorn and a trouble to me.’

And the Hermit answered him and said, ‘What you see in my eyesis pity.  Pity is what looks out at you from my eyes.’

And the young man laughed with scorn, and cried to the Hermit ina bitter voice, and said to him, ‘I have purple and pearls inmy hands, and you have but a mat of reeds on which to lie.  Whatpity should you have for me?  And for what reason have you thispity?’

‘I have pity for you,’ said the Hermit, ‘becauseyou have no knowledge of God.’

‘Is this knowledge of God a precious thing?’ asked theyoung man, and he came close to the mouth of the cavern.

‘It is more precious than all the purple and the pearls ofthe world,’ answered the Hermit.

‘And have you got it?’ said the young Robber, and hecame closer still.

‘Once, indeed,’ answered the Hermit, ‘I possessedthe perfect knowledge of God.  But in my foolishness I parted withit, and divided it amongst others.  Yet even now is such knowledgeas remains to me more precious than purple or pearls.’

And when the young Robber heard this he threw away the purple andthe pearls that he was bearing in his hands, and drawing a sharp swordof curved steel he said to the Hermit, ‘Give me, forthwith thisknowledge of God that you possess, or I will surely slay you. Wherefore should I not slay him who has a treasure greater than my treasure?’

And the Hermit spread out his arms and said, ‘Were it not betterfor me to go unto the uttermost courts of God and praise Him, than tolive in the world and have no knowledge of Him?  Slay me if thatbe your desire.  But I will not give away my knowledge of God.’

And the young Robber knelt down and besought him, but the Hermitwould not talk to him about God, nor give him his Treasure, and theyoung Robber rose up and said to the Hermit, ‘Be it as you will. As for myself, I will go to the City of the Seven Sins, that is butthree days’ journey from this place, and for my purple they willgive me pleasure, and for my pearls they will sell me joy.’ And he took up the purple and the pearls and went swiftly away.

And the Hermit cried out and followed him and besought him. For the space of three days he followed the young Robber on the roadand entreated him to return, nor to enter into the City of the SevenSins.

And ever and anon the young Robber looked back at the Hermit andcalled to him, and said, ‘Will you give me this knowledge of Godwhich is more precious than purple and pearls?  If you will giveme that, I will not enter the city.’

And ever did the Hermit answer, ‘All things that I have I willgive thee, save that one thing only.  For that thing it is notlawful for me to give away.’

And in the twilight of the third day they came nigh to the greatscarlet gates of the City of the Seven Sins.  And from the citythere came the sound of much laughter.

And the young Robber laughed in answer, and sought to knock at thegate.  And as he did so the Hermit ran forward and caught him bythe skirts of his raiment, and said to him: ‘Stretch forth yourhands, and set your arms around my neck, and put your ear close to mylips, and I will give you what remains to me of the knowledge of God.’ And the young Robber stopped.

And when the Hermit had given away his knowledge of God, he fellupon the ground and wept, and a great darkness hid from him the cityand the young Robber, so that he saw them no more.

And as he lay there weeping he was ware of One who was standing besidehim; and He who was standing beside him had feet of brass and hair likefine wool.  And He raised the Hermit up, and said to him: ‘Beforethis time thou hadst the perfect knowledge of God.  Now thou shalthave the perfect love of God.  Wherefore art thou weeping?’ And he kissed him.—Poems in Prose.

WILDE GIVES DIRECTIONS ABOUT ‘DE PROFUNDIS’

H.M. PRISON, READING.

April 1st, 1897.

My Dear Robbie,—I send you a MS. separate from this, whichI hope will arrive safely.  As soon as you have read it, I wantyou to have it carefully copied for me.  There are many causeswhy I wish this to be done.  One will suffice.  I want youto be my literary executor in case of my death, and to have completecontrol of my plays, books, and papers.  As soon as I find I havea legal right to make a will, I will do so.  My wife does not understandmy art, nor could be expected to have any interest in it, and Cyrilis only a child.  So I turn naturally to you, as indeed I do foreverything, and would like you to have all my works.  The deficitthat their sale will produce may be lodged to the credit of Cyril andVivian.  Well, if you are my literary executor, you must be inpossession of the only document that gives any explanation of my extraordinarybehaviour . . . When you have read the letter, you will see the psychologicalexplanation of a course of conduct that from the outside seems a combinationof absolute idiotcy with vulgar bravado.  Some day the truth willhave to be known—not necessarily in my lifetime . . . but I amnot prepared to sit in the grotesque pillory they put me into, for alltime; for the simple reason that I inherited from my father and mothera name of high distinction in literature and art, and I cannot for eternityallow that name to be degraded.  I don’t defend my conduct. I explain it.  Also there are in my letter certain passages whichdeal with my mental development in prison, and the inevitable evolutionof my character and intellectual attitude towards life that has takenplace: and I want you and others who still stand by me and have affectionfor me to know exactly in what mood and manner I hope to face the world. Of course from one point of view I know that on the day of my releaseI shall be merely passing from one prison into another, and there aretimes when the whole world seems to me no larger than my cell and asfull of terror for me.  Still I believe that at the beginning Godmade a world for each separate man, and in that world which is withinus we should seek to live.  At any rate you will read those partsof my letter with less pain than the others.  Of course I neednot remind you how fluid a thing thought is with me—with us all—andof what an evanescent substance are our emotions made.  Still Ido see a sort of possible goal towards which, through art, I may progress. It is not unlikely that you may help me.

As regards the mode of copying: of course it is too long for anyamanuensis to attempt: and your own handwriting, dear Robbie, in yourlast letter seems specially designed to remind me that the task is notto be yours.  I think that the only thing to do is to be thoroughlymodern and to have it typewritten.  Of course the MS. should notpass out of your control, but could you not get Mrs. Marshall to senddown one of her type-writing girls—women are the most reliableas they have no memory for the important—to Hornton Street orPhillimore Gardens, to do it under your supervision?  I assureyou that the typewriting machine, when played with expression, is notmore annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation. Indeed many among those most devoted to domesticity prefer it. I wish the copy to be done not on tissue paper but on good paper suchas is used for plays, and a wide rubricated margin should be left forcorrections . . . If the copy is done at Hornton Street the lady typewritermight be fed through a lattice in the door, like the Cardinals whenthey elect a Pope; till she comes out on the balcony and can say tothe world: “Habet Mundus Epistolam”; for indeed it is anEncyclical letter, and as the Bulls of the Holy Father are named fromtheir opening words, it may be spoken of as the “Epistola:in Carcere et Vinculis.” . . . In point of fact, Robbie,prison life makes one see people and things as they really are. That is why it turns one to stone.  It is the people outside whoare deceived by the illusions of a life in constant motion.  Theyrevolve with life and contribute to its unreality.  We who areimmobile both see and know.  Whether or not the letter does goodto narrow natures and hectic brains, to me it has done good.  Ihave “cleansed my bosom of much perilous stuff”; to borrowa phrase from the poet whom you and I once thought of rescuing fromthe Philistines.  I need not remind you that mere expression isto an artist the supreme and only mode of life.  It is by utterancethat we live.  Of the many, many things for which I have to thankthe Governor there is none for which I am more grateful than for hispermission to write fully and at as great a length as I desire. For nearly two years I had within a growing burden of bitterness, ofmuch of which I have now got rid.  On the other side of the prisonwall there are some poor black soot-besmirched trees that are just breakingout into buds of an almost shrill green.  I know quite well whatthey are going through.  They are finding expression.

Ever yours,

OSCAR.

—Letter from Reading Prison to Robert Ross.

CAREY STREET

Where there is sorrow there in holy ground.  Some day peoplewill realise what that means.  They will know nothing of life tillthey do,—and natures like his can realise it.  When I wasbrought down from my prison to the Court of Bankruptcy, between twopolicemen,—waited in the long dreary corridor that, before thewhole crowd, whom an action so sweet and simple hushed into silence,he might gravely raise his hat to me, as, handcuffed and with bowedhead, I passed him by.  Men have gone to heaven for smaller thingsthan that.  It was in this spirit, and with this mode of love,that the saints knelt down to wash the feet of the poor, or stoopedto kiss the leper on the cheek.  I have never said one single wordto him about what he did.  I do not know to the present momentwhether he is aware that I was even conscious of his action.  Itis not a thing for which one can render formal thanks in formal words. I store it in the treasure-house of my heart.  I keep it thereas a secret debt that I am glad to think I can never possibly repay. It is embalmed and kept sweet by the myrrh and cassia of many tears. When wisdom has been profitless to me, philosophy barren, and the proverbsand phrases of those who have sought to give me consolation as dustand ashes in my mouth, the memory of that little, lovely, silent actof love has unsealed for me all the wells of pity: made the desert blossomlike a rose, and brought me out of the bitterness of lonely exile intoharmony with the wounded, broken, and great heart of the world. When people are able to understand, not merely how beautiful ---’saction was, but why it meant so much to me, and always will mean somuch, then, perhaps, they will realise how and in what spirit they shouldapproach me. . . .

The poor are wise, more charitable, more kind, more sensitive thanwe are.  In their eyes prison is a tragedy in a man’s life,a misfortune, a casuality, something that calls for sympathy in others. They speak of one who is in prison as of one who is ‘in trouble’simply.  It is the phrase they always use, and the expression hasthe perfect wisdom of love in it.  With people of our own rankit is different.  With us, prison makes a man a pariah.  I,and such as I am, have hardly any right to air and sun.  Our presencetaints the pleasures of others.  We are unwelcome when we reappear. To revisit the glimpses of the moon is not for us.  Our very childrenare taken away.  Those lovely links with humanity are broken. We are doomed to be solitary, while our sons still live.  We aredenied the one thing that might heal us and keep us, that might bringbalm to the bruised heart, and peace to the soul in pain.—DeProfundis.

SORROW WEARS NO MASK

Sorrow, being the supreme emotion of which man is capable, is atonce the type and test of all great art.  What the artist is alwayslooking for is the mode of existence in which soul and body are oneand indivisible: in which the outward is expressive of the inward: inwhich form reveals.  Of such modes of existence there are not afew: youth and the arts preoccupied with youth may serve as a modelfor us at one moment: at another we may like to think that, in its subtletyand sensitiveness of impression, its suggestion of a spirit dwellingin external things and making its raiment of earth and air, of mistand city alike, and in its morbid sympathy of its moods, and tones,and colours, modern landscape art is realising for us pictorially whatwas realised in such plastic perfection by the Greeks.  Music,in which all subject is absorbed in expression and cannot be separatedfrom it, is a complex example, and a flower or a child a simple example,of what I mean; but sorrow is the ultimate type both in life and art.

Behind joy and laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hardand callous.  But behind sorrow there is always sorrow.  Pain,unlike pleasure, wears no mask.  Truth in art is not any correspondencebetween the essential idea and the accidental existence; it is not theresemblance of shape to shadow, or of the form mirrored in the crystalto the form itself; it is no echo coming from a hollow hill, any morethan it is a silver well of water in the valley that shows the moonto the moon and Narcissus to Narcissus.  Truth in art is the unityof a thing with itself: the outward rendered expressive of the inward:the soul made incarnate: the body instinct with spirit.  For thisreason there is no truth comparable to sorrow.  There are timeswhen sorrow seems to me to be the only truth.  Other things maybe illusions of the eye or the appetite, made to blind the one and cloythe other, but out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at thebirth of a child or a star there is pain.

More than this, there is about sorrow an intense, an extraordinaryreality.  I have said of myself that I was one who stood in symbolicrelations to the art and culture of my age.  There is not a singlewretched man in this wretched place along with me who does not standin symbolic relation to the very secret of life.  For the secretof life is suffering.  It is what is hidden behind everything. When we begin to live, what is sweet is so sweet to us, and what isbitter so bitter, that we inevitably direct all our desires towardspleasures, and seek not merely for a ‘month or twain to feed onhoneycomb,’ but for all our years to taste no other food, ignorantall the while that we may really be starving the soul.—De Profundis.

VITA NUOVA

Far off, like a perfect pearl, one can see the city of God. It is so wonderful that it seems as if a child could reach it in a summer’sday.  And so a child could.  But with me and such as me itis different.  One can realise a thing in a single moment, butone loses it in the long hours that follow with leaden feet.  Itis so difficult to keep ‘heights that the soul is competent togain.’  We think in eternity, but we move slowly throughtime; and how slowly time goes with us who lie in prison I need nottell again, nor of the weariness and despair that creep back into one’scell, and into the cell of one’s heart, with such strange insistencethat one has, as it were, to garnish and sweep one’s house fortheir coming, as for an unwelcome guest, or a bitter master, or a slavewhose slave it is one’s chance or choice to be.

And, though at present my friends may find it a hard thing to believe,it is true none the less, that for them living in freedom and idlenessand comfort it is more easy to learn the lessons of humility than itis for me, who begin the day by going down on my knees and washing thefloor of my cell.  For prison life with its endless privationsand restrictions makes one rebellious.  The most terrible thingabout it is not that it breaks one’s heart—hearts are madeto be broken—but that it turns one’s heart to stone. One sometimes feels that it is only with a front of brass and a lipof scorn that one can get through the day at all.  And he who isin a state of rebellion cannot receive grace, to use the phrase of whichthe Church is so fond—so rightly fond, I dare say—for inlife as in art the mood of rebellion closes up the channels of the soul,and shuts out the airs of heaven.  Yet I must learn these lessonshere, if I am to learn them anywhere, and must be filled with joy ifmy feet are on the right road and my face set towards ‘the gatewhich is called beautiful,’ though I may fall many times in themire and often in the mist go astray.

This New Life, as through my love of Dante I like sometimes to callit, is of course no new life at all, but simply the continuance, bymeans of development, and evolution, of my former life.  I rememberwhen I was at Oxford saying to one of my friends as we were strollinground Magdalen’s narrow bird-haunted walks one morning in theyear before I took my degree, that I wanted to eat of the fruit of allthe trees in the garden of the world, and that I was going out intothe world with that passion in my soul.  And so, indeed, I wentout, and so I lived.  My only mistake was that I confined myselfso exclusively to the trees of what seemed to me the sun-lit side ofthe garden, and shunned the other side for its shadow and its gloom. Failure, disgrace, poverty, sorrow, despair, suffering, tears even,the broken words that come from lips in pain, remorse that makes onewalk on thorns, conscience that condemns, self-abasement that punishes,the misery that puts ashes on its head, the anguish that chooses sack-clothfor its raiment and into its own drink puts gall:—all these werethings of which I was afraid.  And as I had determined to knownothing of them, I was forced to taste each of them in turn, to feedon them, to have for a season, indeed, no other food at all.

I don’t regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does. There was no pleasure I did not experience.  I threw the pearlof my soul into a cup of wine.  I went down the primrose path tothe sound of flutes.  I lived on honeycomb.  But to have continuedthe same life would have been wrong because it would have been limiting. I had to pass on.  The other half of the garden had its secretsfor me also.—De Profundis.

THE GRAND ROMANTIC

It is when he deals with a sinner that Christ is most romantic, inthe sense of most real.  The world had always loved the saint asbeing the nearest possible approach to the perfection of God. Christ, through some divine instinct in him, seems to have always lovedthe sinner as being the nearest possible approach to the perfectionof man.  His primary desire was not to reform people, any morethan his primary desire was to a relieve suffering.  To turn aninteresting thief into a tedious honest man was not his aim.  Hewould have thought little of the Prisoners’ Aid Society and othermodern movements of the kind.  The conversion of a publican intoa Pharisee would not have seemed to him a great achievement.  Butin a manner not yet understood of the world he regarded sin and sufferingas being in themselves beautiful holy things and modes of perfection.

It seems a very dangerous idea.  It is—all great ideasare dangerous.  That it was Christ’s creed admits of no doubt. That it is the true creed I don’t doubt myself.

Of course the sinner must repent.  But why?  Simply becauseotherwise he would be unable to realise what he had done.  Themoment of repentance is the moment of initiation.  More than that:it is the means by which one alters one’s past.  The Greeksthought that impossible.  They often say in their Gnomic aphorisms,‘Even the Gods cannot alter the past.’  Christ showedthat the commonest sinner could do it, that it was the one thing hecould do.  Christ, had he been asked, would have said—I feelquite certain about it—that the moment the prodigal son fell onhis knees and wept, he made his having wasted his substance with harlots,his swine-herding and hungering for the husks they ate, beautiful andholy moments in his life.  It is difficult for most people to graspthe idea.  I dare say one has to go to prison to understand it. If so, it may be worth while going to prison.

There is something so unique about Christ.  Of course just asthere are false dawns before the dawn itself, and winter days so fullof sudden sunlight that they will cheat the wise crocus into squanderingits gold before its time, and make some foolish bird call to its mateto build on barren boughs, so there were Christians before Christ. For that we should be grateful.  The unfortunate thing is thatthere have been none since.  I make one exception, St. Francisof Assisi.  But then God had given him at his birth the soul ofa poet, as he himself when quite young had in mystical marriage takenpoverty as his bride: and with the soul of a poet and the body of abeggar he found the way to perfection not difficult.  He understoodChrist, and so he became like him.  We do not require the LiberConformitatum to teach us that the life of St. Francis was the trueImitatio Christi, a poem compared to which the book of that nameis merely prose.

Indeed, that is the charm about Christ, when all is said: he is justlike a work of art.  He does not really teach one anything, butby being brought into his presence one becomes something.  Andeverybody is predestined to his presence.  Once at least in hislife each man walks with Christ to Emmaus.—De Profundis.

CLAPHAM JUNCTION

My lot has been one of public infamy, of long imprisonment, of misery,of ruin, of disgrace, but I am not worthy of it—not yet, at anyrate.  I remember that I used to say that I thought I could beara real tragedy if it came to me with purple pall and a mask of noblesorrow, but that the dreadful thing about modernity was that it puttragedy into the raiment of comedy, so that the great realities seemedcommonplace or grotesque or lacking in style.  It is quite trueabout modernity.  It has probably always been true about actuallife.  It is said that all martyrdoms seemed mean to the lookeron.  The nineteenth century is no exception to the rule.

Everything about my tragedy has been hideous, mean, repellent, lackingin style; our very dress makes us grotesque.  We are the zaniesof sorrow.  We are clowns whose hearts are broken.  We arespecially designed to appeal to the sense of humour.  On November13th, 1895, I was brought down here from London.  From two o’clocktill half-past two on that day I had to stand on the centre platformof Clapham Junction in convict dress, and handcuffed, for the worldto look at.  I had been taken out of the hospital ward withouta moment’s notice being given to me.  Of all possible objectsI was the most grotesque.  When people saw me they laughed. Each train as it came up swelled the audience.  Nothing could exceedtheir amusement.  That was, of course, before they knew who I was. As soon as they had been informed they laughed still more.  Forhalf an hour I stood there in the grey November rain surrounded by ajeering mob.—De Profundis.

THE BROKEN RESOLUTION

We call ours a utilitarian age, and we do not know the uses of anysingle thing.  We have forgotten that water can cleanse, and firepurify, and that the Earth is mother to us all.  As a consequenceour art is of the moon and plays with shadows, while Greek art is ofthe sun and deals directly with things.  I feel sure that in elementalforces there is purification, and I want to go back to them and livein their presence.

Of course to one so modern as I am, ‘Enfant de mon siècle,’merely to look at the world will be always lovely.  I tremble withpleasure when I think that on the very day of my leaving prison boththe laburnum and the lilac will be blooming in the gardens, and thatI shall see the wind stir into restless beauty the swaying gold of theone, and make the other toss the pale purple of its plumes, so thatall the air shall be Arabia for me.  Linnæus fell on hisknees and wept for joy when he saw for the first time the long heathof some English upland made yellow with the tawny aromatic brooms ofthe common furze; and I know that for me, to whom flowers are part ofdesire, there are tears waiting in the petals of some rose.  Ithas always been so with me from my boyhood.  There is not a singlecolour hidden away in the chalice of a flower, or the curve of a shell,to which, by some subtle sympathy with the very soul of things, my naturedoes not answer.  Like Gautier, I have always been one of those‘pour qui le monde visible existe.’

Still, I am conscious now that behind all this beauty, satisfyingthough it may be, there is some spirit hidden of which the painted formsand shapes are but modes of manifestation, and it is with this spiritthat I desire to become in harmony.  I have grown tired of thearticulate utterances of men and things.  The Mystical in Art,the Mystical in Life, the Mystical in Nature this is what I am lookingfor.  It is absolutely necessary for me to find it somewhere.

All trials are trials for one’s life, just as all sentencesare sentences of death; and three times have I been tried.  Thefirst time I left the box to be arrested, the second time to be ledback to the house of detention, the third time to pass into a prisonfor two years.  Society, as we have constituted it, will have noplace for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fallon unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I mayhide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in thedarkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints sothat none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters,and with bitter herbs make me whole.—De Profundis.

DOMESTICITY AT BERNEVAL

DIEPPE,

June 1st, 1897.

My Dear Robbie,—I propose to live at Berneval.  I willnotlive in Paris, nor in Algiers, nor in Southern Italy. Surely a house for a year, if I choose to continue there, at £32is absurdly cheap.  I could not live cheaper at a hotel. You are penny foolish, and pound foolish—a dreadful state formy financier to be in.  I told M. Bonnet that my bankers were MM.Ross et Cie, banquiers célèbres de Londres—and nowyou suddenly show me that you have no place among the great financialpeople, and are afraid of any investment over £31, 10s. It is merely the extra ten shillings that baffles you.  As regardspeople living on me, and the extra bedrooms: dear boy, there is no onewho would stay with me but you, and you will pay your own bill at thehotel for meals; and as for your room, the charge will be nominally2 francs 50 centimes a night, but there will be lots of extras suchas bougie, bainand hot water, and all cigarettes smoked in thebedrooms are charged extra.  And if any one does not take the extras,of course he is charged more:—

Bain, 25 C.

Pas de bain, 50 C.

Cigarette dans la chambre à coucher, 10 C. pour chaque cigarette.

Pas de cigarette dans la chambre à coucher, 20 C. pour chaquecigarette.

This is the system at all good hotels.  If Reggie comes, ofcourse he will pay a little more: I cannot forget that he gave me adressing-case.  Sphinxes pay a hundred per cent more than any oneelse—they always did in Ancient Egypt.

But seriously, Robbie, if people stayed with me, of course they wouldpay their pensionat the hotel.  They would have to: exceptarchitects.  A modern architect, like modern architecture, doesn’tpay.  But then I know only one architect and you are hiding himsomewhere from me.  I believe that he is as extinct as the dado,of which now only fossil remains are found, chiefly in the vicinityof Brompton, where they are sometimes discovered by workmen excavating. They are usually embedded in the old Lincrusta Walton strata, and arerare consequently.

I visited M. le Curé { 4}to-day.  He has a charming house and a jardin potager. He showed me over the church.  To-morrow I sit in the choir byhis special invitation.  He showed me all his vestments. To-morrow he really will be charming in red.  He knows I am a heretic,and believes Pusey is still alive.  He says that God will convertEngland on account of England’s kindness to les prêtresexilésat the time of the Revolution.  It is to be thereward of that sea-lashed island.

Stained glass windows are wanted in the church; he has only six;fourteen more are needed.  He gets them at 300 francs—£12—awindow in Paris.  I was nearly offering half a dozen, but rememberedyou, and so only gave him something pour les pauvres.  Youhad a narrow escape, Robbie.  You should be thankful.

I hope the £40 is on its way, and that the £60 will follow. I am going to hire a boat.  It will save walking and so be an economyin the end.  Dear Robbie, I must start well.  If the lifeof St. Francis of Assissi awaits me I shall not be angry.  Worsethings might happen.

Yours,

OSCAR.

—Letter to Robert Ross.

A VISIT TO THE POPE

c/o COOK & SON, PIAZZA DI SPAGNA, ROME,

April 16th, 1900.

My dear Robbie,—I simply cannot write.  It is too horrid,not of me, but to me.  It is a mode of paralysis—a cacoëthestacendi—the one form that malady takes in me.

Well, all passed over very successfully.  Palermo, where westayed eight days, was lovely.  The most beautifully situated townin the world—it dreams away its life in the concha d’oro,the exquisite valley that lies between two seas.  The lemon grovesand the orange gardens were so entirely perfect that I became quitea Pre-Raphaelite, and loathed the ordinary impressionists whose muddlysouls and blurred intelligences would have rendered, but by mud andblur, those “golden lamps hung in a green night” that filledme with such joy.  The elaborate and exquisite detail of the truePre-Raphaelite is the compensation they offer us for the absence ofmotion; literature and motion being the only arts that are not immobile.

Then nowhere, not even at Ravenna, have I seen such mosaics as inthe Capella Palatine, which from pavement to domed ceiling is all gold:one really feels as if one was sitting in the heart of a great honey-comblooking at angels singing: and lookingat angels, or indeed atpeople, singing, is much nicer than listening to them, for this reason:the great artists always give to their angels lutes without strings,pipes without vent-holes, and reeds through which no wind can wanderor make whistlings.

Monreale you have heard of—with its cloisters and cathedral:we often drove there.

I also made great friends with a young seminarist, who lived in thecathedral of Palermo—he and eleven others, in little rooms beneaththe roof, like birds.

Every day he showed me all over the cathedral, I knelt before thehuge porphyry sarcophagus in which Frederick the Second lies: it isa sublime bare monstrous thing—blood-coloured, and held up bylions who have caught some of the rage of the great Emperor’srestless soul.  At first my young friend, Giuseppe Loverdi, gaveme information; but on the third day I gave information to him, andre-wrote history as usual, and told him all about the supreme King andhis Court of Poets, and the terrible book that he never wrote. His reason for entering the church was singularly mediæval. I asked him why he thought of becoming a clerico, and how. He answered: “My father is a cook and most poor; and we are manyat home, so it seemed to me a good thing that there should be in sosmall a house as ours, one mouth less to feed; for though I am slim,I eat much, too much, alas! I fear.”

I told him to be comforted, because God used poverty often as a meansof bringing people to Him, and used riches never, or rarely; so Giuseppewas comforted, and I gave him a little book of devotion, very pretty,and with far more pictures than prayers in it—so of great serviceto Giuseppe whose eyes are beautiful.  I also gave him many lire,and prophesied for him a Cardinal’s hat, if he remained very goodand never forgot me.

At Naples we stopped three days: most of my friends are, as you know,in prison, but I met some of nice memory.

We came to Rome on Holy Thursday.  H--- left on Saturday forGland—and yesterday, to the terror of Grissell { 5}and all the Papal Court, I appeared in the front rank of the pilgrimsin the Vatican, and got the blessing of the Holy Father—a blessingthey would have denied me.

He was wonderful as he was carried past me on his throne—notof flesh and blood, but a white soul robed in white and an artist aswell as a saint—the only instance in history, if the newspapersare to be believed.  I have seen nothing like the extraordinarygrace of his gestures as he rose, from moment to moment, to bless—possiblythe pilgrims, but certainly me.

Tree should see him.  It is his only chance.

I was deeply impressed, and my walking-stick showed signs of budding,would have budded, indeed, only at the door of the Chapel it was takenfrom me by the Knave of Spades.  This strange prohibition is, ofcourse, in honour of Tannhäuser.

How did I get the ticket?  By a miracle, of course.  Ithought it was hopeless and made no effort of any kind.  On Saturdayafternoon at five o’clock H--- and I went to have tea at the Hôtelde l’Europe.  Suddenly, as I was eating buttered toast, aman—or what seemed to be one—dressed like a hotel porterentered and asked me would I like to see the Pope on Easter Day. I bowed my head humbly and said “Non sum dignus,” or wordsto that effect.  He at once produced a ticket!

When I tell you that his countenance was of supernatural ugliness,and that the price of the ticket was thirty pieces of silver, I needsay no more.

An equally curious thing is that whenever I pass the hotel, whichI do constantly, I see the same man.  Scientists call that phenomenonan obsession of the visual nerve.  You and I know better.

On the afternoon of Easter Day I heard Vespers at the Lateran: musicquite lovely.  At the close, a Bishop in red, and with red gloves—suchas Pater talks of in Gaston de Latour—came out on the balconyand showed us the Relics.  He was swarthy, and wore a yellow mitre. A sinister mediæval man, but superbly Gothic, just like the bishopscarved on stalls or on portals: and when one thinks that once peoplemocked at stained-glass attitudes! they are the only attitudes for theclothes.  The sight of the Bishop, whom I watched with fascination,filled me with the great sense of the realism of Gothic art.  Neitherin Greek art nor in Gothic art is there any pose.  Posing was inventedby bad portrait-painters; and the first person who posed was a stock-broker,and he has gone on posing ever since.

I send you a photograph I took on Palm Sunday at Palermo.  Dosend me some of yours, and love me always, and try to read this letter.

Kindest regards to your dear mother.

Always,

OSCAR.

—Letter to Robert Ross.

FOOTNOTES

{ 1}  “TheInfluence of Pater and Matthew Arnold in the Prose-Writings of OscarWilde,” by Ernst Bendz.  London: H. Grevel & Co., 1914.

{ 2}  “TheEighteen Nineties: A Review of Art and Idea at the Close of the NineteenthCentury,” by Holbrook Jackson.  London: Grant Richards Ltd.,1913.

{ 3} Mortimer Menpes.

{ 4}  M. ConstantTrop-Hardy, died at Berneval, March 2, 1898.

{ 5}  Hartwellde la Garde Grissell, a Papal Chamberlain.

Related articles