is ripened and set in
a higher key of thought by the fact that Oscar told it more than ten
years after it happened.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Oscar was always fond of loosely quoting or paraphrasing in
conversation the purple passages from contemporary writers. He said
them exquisitely and sometimes his own embroidery was as good as the
original. This discipleship, however, always suggested to me a lack of
originality. In especial Matthew Arnold had an extraordinary influence
upon him, almost as great indeed as Pater.

[4] "Stain," not "pain," in the original.

CHAPTER IV

The most important event in Oscar's early life happened while he was
still an undergraduate at Oxford: his father, Sir William Wilde, died
in 1876, leaving to his wife, Lady Wilde, nearly all he possessed,
some L7,000, the interest of which was barely enough to keep her in
genteel poverty. The sum is so small that one is constrained to
believe the report that Sir William Wilde in his later years kept
practically open house--"lashins of whisky and a good larder," and was
besides notorious for his gallantries. Oscar's small portion, a little
money and a small house with some land, came to him in the nick of
time: he used the cash partly to pay some debts at Oxford, partly to
defray the expenses of a trip to Greece. It was natural that Oscar
Wilde, with his eager sponge-like receptivity, should receive the best
academic education of his time, and should better that by travel. We
all get something like the education we desire, and Oscar Wilde, it
always seemed to me, was over-educated, had learned, that is, too much
from books and not enough from life and had thought too little for
himself; but my readers will be able to judge of this for themselves.

In 1877 he accompanied Professor Mahaffy on a long tour through
Greece. The pleasure and profit Oscar got from the trip were so great
that he failed to return to Oxford on the date fixed. The Dons fined
him forty-five pounds for the breach of discipline; but they returned
the money to him in the following year when he won First Honours in
"Greats" and the Newdigate prize.

This visit to Greece when he was twenty-three confirmed the view of
life which he had already formed and I have indicated sufficiently
perhaps in that talk with Pater already recorded. But no one will
understand Oscar Wilde who for a moment loses sight of the fact that
he was a pagan born: as Gautier says, "One for whom the visi