ry to live. Time and space,
succession and extension, are merely accidental conditions of a thought.
The imagination can transcend them and more, in a free sphere of ideal
existences. Things, also, are in their essence what we choose to make
them. A thing is, according to the mode in which one looks at it. "Where
others," says Blake, "see but the dawn coming over the hill, I see the
sons of God shouting for joy." What seemed to the world and to myself my
future I lost irretrievably when I let myself be taunted into taking the
action against your father, had, I daresay, lost in reality long before
that. What lies before me is the past. I have got to make myself look on
that with different eyes, to make the world look on it with different
eyes, to make God look on it with different eyes. This I cannot do by
ignoring it, or slighting it, or praising it, or denying it. It is only
to be done fully by accepting it as an inevitable part of the evolution
of my life and character: by bowing my head to everything that I have
suffered.

How far I am away from the true temper of soul, this letter in its
changing, uncertain moods, its scorn and bitterness, its aspirations and
its failures to realise those aspirations shows you quite clearly. But
do not forget in what a terrible school I am setting at my task. And
incomplete, imperfect, as I am, yet from me you may have still much to
gain. You came to me to learn the pleasure of life and the pleasure of
art. Perhaps I am chosen to teach you something much more wonderful, the
meaning of sorrow and its beauty.

Your affectionate friend,

OSCAR WILDE.

This letter of Oscar Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas is curiously
self-revealing and characteristic. While reading it one should recall
Oscar's provocation. Lord Alfred Douglas had driven him to the
prosecution, and then deserted him and left him in prison without using
his influence to mitigate his friend's suffering or his pen to console
and encourage him. The abandonment was heartless and complete. The
letter, however, is vindictive: in spite of its intimate revelations
Oscar took care that his indictment should be made public. The flagrant
self-deceptions of the plea show its sincerity: Oscar even accuses young
Alfred Douglas of having induced him to eat and drink too much.

The tap-root of the letter is a colossal vanity; the bitterness of it,
wounded egotism; the falseness of it, a self-righteous pose of ineffable
superiority a