covering his mouth with his hand, he laughed and said: "It does not
seem to me sufficiently vecu."

Before the enormity of that I fell back. But at once he became more
human. He complained that even the opiate of work was denied him,
since no one would handle his wares.

The Athenians, who lived surrounded by statues, learned from them the
value of silence, the mystery that it lends to beauty, in particular
the dignity that it gives to grief. In their tragedies any victim of
destiny is as though stricken dumb. Wilde knew that, he knew
everything, in addition to being a thorough Hellenist. None the less
he told of his fate. It was human, therefore terrible, but it was not
the tragic muse. It was merely a tragedy of letters.

Letters, yes, but lower case. Wilde was a third rate poet who
occasionally rose to the second class but not once to the first. Prose
is more difficult than verse and in it he is rather sloppy. In spite
of which, or perhaps precisely on that account, he called himself
lord of language. Well, why not, if he wanted to? Besides, in his talk
he was lord and more--sultan, pontifex maximus. Hook, Jerrold, Smith,
Sheridan, rolled into one, could not have been as brilliant. In talk
he blinded and it is the subsiding wonder of it that his plays
contain.

In the old maps, on the vague places, early geographers used to put:
Hic sunt leones--Here are lions. On any catalogue of Wilde's plays
there should be written: Here lions might have been. For assuming his
madness, one must also admit his genius and the uninterrupted
conjunction of the two might have produced brilliancies such as few
bookshelves display.

Therein is the tragedy of letters. Renan said that morality is the
supreme illusion. The diagnosis may or may not be exact. Yet it is on
illusions that we all subsist. We live on lies by day and dreams at
night. From the standpoint of the higher mathematics, morality may be
an illusion. But it is very sustaining. Formerly it was also Oscar
Wilde inspirational. In post-pagan days it created a new conception of
beauty. Apart from that, it has nothing whatever to do with the arts,
except the art of never displeasing, which, in itself, is the whole
secret of mediocrity.

Oscar Wilde lacked that art, and I can think of no better epitaph for
him.

Here ends this book written by Edgar Saltus, arranged in this form by
Laurence C. Woodworth, Scrivener, and printed for the BROTHERS OF THE
BOOK at the press of