ry.

We like the hero and, spite of his somewhat unsociable, devotion to his
art, Hallward, better than Lord Henry Wotton. He has too much of a not
very really refined world in him and about him, and his somewhat cynic
opinions, which seem sometimes to be those of the writer, who may,
however, have intended Lord Henry as a satiric sketch. Mr. Wilde can
hardly have intended him, with his cynic amity of mind and temper, any
more than the miserable end of Dorian himself, to figure the motive and
tendency of a true Cyrenaic or Epicurean doctrine of life. In contrast
with Hallward the artist, whose sensibilities idealise the world around
him, the personality of Dorian Gray, above all, into something
magnificent and strange, we might say that Lord Henry, and even more
the, from the first, suicidal hero, loses too much in life to be a true
Epicurean--loses so much in the way of impressions, of pleasant
memories, and subsequent hopes, which Hallward, by a really Epicurean
economy, manages to secure. It should be said, however, in fairness,
that the writer is impersonal; seems not to have identified himself
entirely with any one of his characters; and Wotton's cynicism, or
whatever it be, at least makes a very clever story possible. He becomes
the spoiler of the fair young man, whose bodily form remains un-aged;
while his picture, the _chef d'oeuvre_ of the artist Hallward, changes
miraculously with the gradual corruption of his soul. How true, what a
light on the artistic nature, is the following on actual personalities
and their revealing influence in art. We quote it as an example of Mr.
Wilde's more serious style.

"I sometimes think that there are only two eras of any importance
in the world's history. The first is the appearance of a new medium
for art, and the second is the appearance of a new personality for
art also. What the invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians,
the face of Antinous was to late Greek sculpture, and the face of
Dorian Gray will some day be to me. It is not merely that I paint
from him, draw from him, sketch from him. Of course I have done all
that. But he is much more to me than a model or a sitter. I won't
tell you that I am dissatisfied with what I have done of him, or
that his beauty is such that Art cannot express it. There is
nothing that Art cannot express, and I know that the work I have
done, since I met Dorian Gray, is good