o true and definite homosexual impulse; homosexuality is merely
simulated by the ardent and hyperesthetic emotions of the poet.[91] The
same quality of the poet's emotional temperament may doubtless, also, be
invoked in the case of Goethe, who is said to have written elegies which,
on account of their homosexual character, still remain unpublished.

The most famous homosexual trial of recent times in England was that of
Oscar Wilde, a writer whose literary reputation may be said to be still
growing, not only in England but throughout the world. Wilde was the son
of parents who were both of unusual ability and somewhat eccentric. Both
these tendencies became in him more concentrated. He was born with, as it
were, a congenital antipathy to the commonplace, a natural love of
paradox, and he possessed the skill to embody the characteristic in
finished literary form. At the same time, it must not be forgotten,
beneath this natural attitude of paradox, his essential judgments on life
and literature were usually sound and reasonable. His essay on "The Soul
of Man Under Socialism" witnessed to his large and enlightened conception
of life, and his profound admiration for Flaubert to the sanity and
solidity of his literary taste. In early life he revealed no homosexual
tendencies; he married and had children. After he had begun to outgrow his
youthful esthetic extravagances, however, and to acquire success and fame,
he developed what was at first a simply inquisitive interest in inversion.
Such inquisitive interest is sometimes the sign of an emerging homosexual
impulse. It proved to be so in Wilde's case and ultimately he was found to
be cultivating the acquaintance of youths of low class and doubtful
character. Although this development occurred comparatively late in life,
we must hesitate to describe Wilde's homosexuality as acquired. If we
consider his constitution and his history, it is not difficult to suppose
that homosexual germs were present in a latent form from the first, and it
may quite well be that Wilde's inversion was of that kind which is now
described as retarded, though still congenital.

As is usual in England, no active efforts were made to implicate Wilde in
any criminal charge. It was his own action, as even he himself seems to
have vaguely realized beforehand, which brought the storm about his head.
He was arrested, tried, condemned, and at once there arose a general howl
of execration, joined in even by th