amid the mourning of a
nation or tossed as dust to the wind, is a matter of utter indifference.

Heine's verse holds the supreme consolation:

Immerhin mich wird umgeben
Gotteshimmel dort wie hier
Und wie Todtenlampen schweben
Nachts die Sterne ueber mir.

Oscar Wilde's work was over, his gift to the world completed years
before. Even the friends who loved him and delighted in the charm of his
talk, in his light-hearted gaiety and humour, would scarcely have kept
him longer in the pillory, exposed to the loathing and contempt of this
all-hating world.

The good he did lives after him, and is immortal, the evil is buried in
his grave. Who would deny to-day that he was a quickening and liberating
influence? If his life was given overmuch to self-indulgence, it must be
remembered that his writings and conversation were singularly kindly,
singularly amiable, singularly pure. No harsh or coarse or bitter word
ever passed those eloquent laughing lips. If he served beauty in her
myriad forms, he only showed in his works the beauty that was amiable
and of good report. If only half-a-dozen men mourned for him, their
sorrow was unaffected and intense, and perhaps the greatest of men have
not found in their lifetime even half-a-dozen devoted admirers and
lovers. It is well with our friend, we say: at any rate, he was not
forced to drink the bitter lees of a suffering and dishonourable old
age: Death was merciful to him.

My task is finished. I don't think anyone will doubt that I have done
it in a reverent spirit, telling the truth as I see it, from the
beginning to the end, and hiding or omitting as little as might be of
what ought to be told. Yet when I come to the parting I am painfully
conscious that I have not done Oscar Wilde justice; that some fault or
other in me has led me to dwell too much on his faults and failings and
grudged praise to his soul-subduing charm and the incomparable sweetness
and gaiety of his nature.

Let me now make amends. When to the sessions of sad memory I summon up
the spirits of those whom I have met in the world and loved, men famous
and men of unfulfilled renown, I miss no one so much as I miss Oscar
Wilde. I would rather spend an evening with him than with Renan or
Carlyle, or Verlaine or Dick Burton or Davidson. I would rather have him
back now than almost anyone I have ever met. I have known more heroic
souls and some deeper souls; souls much more keenly alive to idea