s police.
The envelope is dated October 13, 1898:--

From
M. Sebastian Melmoth,
Hotel d'Alsace,
Rue des Beaux-arts,
Paris.

MY DEAR FRANK:

How are you? I read your appreciation of Rodin's "Balzac" with intensest
pleasure, and I am looking forward to more Shakespeare--you will of
course put all your Shakespearean essays into a book, and, equally of
course, I must have a copy. It is a great era in Shakespearean
criticism--the first time that one has looked in the plays not for
philosophy, for there is none, but for the wonder of a great
personality--something far better, and far more mysterious than any
philosophy--it is a great thing that you have done. I remember writing
once in "Intentions" that the more objective a work of art is in form,
the more subjective it really is in matter--and that it is only when you
give the poet a mask that he can tell you the truth. But you have shown
it fully in the case of the one artist whose personality was supposed to
be a mystery of deep seas, a secret as impenetrable as the secret of the
moon.

Paris is terrible in its heat. I walk in streets of brass, and there is
no one here. Even the criminal classes have gone to the seaside, and the
gendarmes yawn and regret their enforced idleness. Giving wrong
directions to the English tourists is the only thing that consoles them.

You were most kind and generous last month in letting me have a
cheque--it gives me just the margin to live on and to live by. May I
have it again this month? or has gold flown away from you?

Ever yours,

OSCAR.

THE DEDICATION OF "AN IDEAL HUSBAND"

I received the following letter from Oscar early in 1899 I imagine. It
was written in the spring after the winter we spent in La Napoule.

From M. Sebastian Melmoth,
Gland,
Canton Vaud,
Switzerland.

MY DEAR FRANK:

I am, as you see from above, in Switzerland with M----: a rather
dreadful combination: the villa is pretty, and on the borders of the
lake with pretty pines about: on the other side are the mountains of
Savoy and Mont Blanc: we are an hour, by a slow train, from Geneva. But
M----is tedious, and lacks conversation: also he gives me Swiss wine to
drink: it is horrible: he occupies himself with small economies, and
mean domestic interests, so I suffer very much. _Ennui_ is the enemy.

I want to know if you will allow me to dedicate to you my next play,
"The Ideal Husband"--which Smithers is bringing out for me in the same
form