ld scarcely be
known, even to the educated; whereas the fame of Browning, Swinburne,
Meredith, or even Oscar Wilde, would increase and grow brighter with
time, till, in one hundred or five hundred years, no one would dream
of comparing pushful politicians like Gladstone or Beaconsfield with
men of genius like Swinburne or Wilde. He simply would not see it and
when he perceived that the weight of argument was against him he
declared that if it were true, it was so much the worse for humanity.
In his opinion anyone living a clean life was worth more than a
writer of love songs or the maker of clever comedies--Mr. John Smith
worth more than Shakespeare!

He was as deaf as only Englishmen can be deaf to the plea for abstract
justice.

"You don't even say Wilde's innocent," he threw at me more than once.

"I believe him to be innocent," I declared truthfully, "but it is
better that a hundred guilty men go free than that one man should not
have a fair trial. And how can this man have a fair trial now when the
papers for weeks past have been filled with violent diatribes against
him and his works?"

One point, peculiarly English, he used again and again.

"So long as substantial justice is done," he said, "it is all we care
about."

"Substantial justice will never be done," I cried, "so long as that is
your ideal. Your arrow can never go quite so high as it is aimed." But
I got no further.

If Oscar Wilde had been a general or a so-called empire builder, _The
Times_ might have affronted public opinion and called attention to his
virtues, and argued that they should be taken in extenuation of his
offences; but as he was only a writer no one seemed to owe him
anything or to care what became of him.

Mr. Walter was fair-minded in comparison with most men of his class.
There was staying with him at this very time an Irish gentleman, who
listened to my pleading for Wilde with ill-concealed indignation.
Excited by Arthur Walter's obstinacy to find fresh arguments, I
pointed out that Wilde's offence was pathological and not criminal and
would not be punished in a properly constituted state.

"You admit," I said, "that we punish crime to prevent it spreading;
wipe this sin off the statute book and you would not increase the
sinners by one: then why punish them?"

"Oi'd whip such sinners to death, so I would," cried the Irishman;
"hangin's too good for them."

"You only punished lepers," I went on, "in the middle ages, b