The Project Gutenberg EBook of Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2), by Frank Harris

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Title: Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2)
His Life and Confessions

Author: Frank Harris

Release Date: October 17, 2005 [EBook #16895]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OSCAR WILDE, VOLUME 2 (OF 2) ***

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OSCAR WILDE

HIS LIFE AND CONFESSIONS

BY

FRANK HARRIS

VOLUME II

[Illustration: Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas About 1893]

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR

29 WAVERLEY PLACE
NEW YORK CITY

MCMXVIII

Imprime en Allemagne
Printed in Germany

For he who sins a second time
Wakes a dead soul to pain,
And draws it from its spotted shroud,
And makes it bleed again,
And makes it bleed great gouts of blood,
And makes it bleed in vain.

--_The Ballad of Reading Gaol._

Copyright, 1916,
BY FRANK HARRIS

BOOK II

CHAPTER XVII

Prison for Oscar Wilde, an English prison with its insufficient bad
food[1] and soul-degrading routine for that amiable, joyous, eloquent,
pampered Sybarite. Here was a test indeed; an ordeal as by fire. What
would he make of two years' hard labour in a lonely cell?

There are two ways of taking prison, as of taking most things, and all
the myriad ways between these two extremes; would Oscar be conquered by
it and allow remorse and hatred to corrupt his very heart, or would he
conquer the prison and possess and use it? Hammer or anvil--which?

Victory has its virtue and is justified of itself like sunshine; defeat
carries its own condemnation. Yet we have all tasted its bitter waters:
only "infinite virtue" can pass through life victorious, Shakespeare
tells us, and we mortals are not of infinite virtue. The myriad
vicissitudes of the struggle search out all our weaknesses; test all
our powers. Every victory shows a more difficult height to scale, a
steeper pinnacle of god-like hardship--that's the reward of victory: it
provides the hero with ever-new battle-fields: no re