ictured presentment,
while he himself goes unscathed. Day by day, each fresh sin that he
commits stamps its mark of degradation upon the painted image. Cruelty
sensuality, treachery, all nameless crimes, corrupt and render hideous
the effigy on the canvas; he sees in it the gradual pollution and ruin
of his soul, while his own fleshly features preserve unstained all the
freshness and virginity of his sinless youth. The contrast at first
alarms and horrifies him; but at length he becomes accustomed to it, and
finds a sinister delight in watching the progress of the awful change.
He locks up the portrait in a secret chamber, and constantly retires
thither to ponder over the ghastly miracle. No one but he knows or
suspects the incredible truth; and he guards like a murder-secret this
visible revelation of the difference between what he is and what he
seems. This is a powerful situation; and the reader may be left to
discover for himself how Mr. Wilde works it out.

[31] _Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, September, 1890._

* * * * *

_ ... Pater, who is, on the whole, the most perfect master of English
prose now creating amongst us._

* * * * *

WALTER PATER ON "DORIAN GRAY."

There is always something of an excellent talker about the writing of
Mr. Oscar Wilde, (wrote Pater, in reviewing "Dorian Gray" for _The
Bookman_[32]) and in his hands, as happens so rarely with those who
practise it, the form of dialogue is justified by its being really
alive. His genial, laughter-loving sense of life and its enjoyable
intercourse, goes far to obviate any crudity there may be in the
paradox, with which, as with the bright and shining truth which often
underlies it, Mr. Wilde, startling his "countrymen," carries on, more
perhaps than any other writer, the brilliant critical work of Mathew
Arnold. _The Decay of Lying_, for instance, is all but unique in its
half-humorous, yet wholly convinced, presentment of certain valuable
truths of criticism. Conversational ease, the fluidity of life,
felicitous expression, are qualities which have a natural alliance to
the successful writing of fiction; and side by side with Mr. Wilde's
_Intentions_ (so he entitles his critical efforts) comes a novel,
certainly original, and affording the reader a fair opportunity of
comparing his practice as a creative artist with many a precept he has
enounced as critic concerning it.

A