therwise surely any
honest magistrate would have condemned the father who sent obscene
letters to his son's wife--a lady above reproach. These vile letters
and the magistrate's bias, seemed to me to add the final touch of the
grotesque to the horrible vileness of the trial. It was all worthy of
the seventh circle of Dante, but Dante had never imagined such a
father and such judges!

* * * * *

Next morning Oscar Wilde was again put in the dock. The evidence of
the Queensberry trial was read and therewith the case was closed for
the Crown.

Sir Edward Clarke rose and submitted that there was no case to go to
the jury on the general counts. After a long legal argument for and
against, Mr. Justice Wills said that he would reserve the question for
the Court of Appeal. The view he took was that "the evidence was of
the slenderest kind"; but he thought the responsibility must be left
with the jury. To this judge "the slenderest kind" of evidence was
worthful so long as it told against the accused.

Sir Edward Clarke then argued that the cases of Shelley, Parker and
Wood failed on the ground of the absence of corroboration. Mr.
Justice Wills admitted that Shelley showed "a peculiar exaltation" of
mind; there was, too, mental derangement in his family, and worst of
all there was no corroboration of his statements. Accordingly, in
spite of the arguments of the Solicitor-General, Shelley's evidence
was cut out. But Shelley's evidence had already been taken, had
already prejudiced the jury. Indeed, it had been the evidence which
had influenced Mr. Justice Charles in the previous trial to sum up
dead against the defendant: Mr. Justice Charles called Shelley "the
only serious witness."

Now it appeared that Shelley's evidence should never have been taken
at all, that the jury ought never to have heard Shelley's testimony or
the Judge's acceptance of it!

* * * * *

When the court opened next morning I knew that the whole case depended
on Oscar Wilde, and the showing he would make in the box, but alas! he
was broken and numbed. He was not a fighter, and the length of this
contest might have wearied a combative nature. The Solicitor-General
began by examining him on his letters to Lord Alfred Douglas and we
had the "prose poem" again and the rest of the ineffable nonsensical
prejudice of the middle-class mind against passionate sentiment. It
came out in evidence t