ainful acquirement, a sort of
republican duty.

[Footnote 4: I had already marked it down to put in this popular
edition of my book that Wilde continually pretended to a knowledge of
music which he had not got. He could hardly tell one tune from
another, but he loved to talk of that "scarlet thing of Dvorak,"
hoping in this way to be accepted as a real critic of music, when he
knew nothing about it and cared even less. His eulogies of music and
painting betrayed him continually though he did not know it.]

"I was so fascinated by painting that I haunted the National Gallery,
which Doyle had made perhaps the finest collection of its size in the
world; and I longed for money to buy painting materials with. This
afterwards saved me from starving: it was as a critic of music and
painting in the _World_ that I won through my ten years of journalism
before I finished up with you on the _Saturday Review_. I could make
deaf stockbrokers read my two pages on music, the alleged joke being
that I knew nothing about it. The real joke was that I knew all about
it.

"Now it was quite evident to me, as it was to Whistler and Beardsley,
that Oscar knew no more about pictures[5] than anyone of his general
culture and with his opportunities can pick up as he goes along. He
could be witty about Art, as I could be witty about engineering; but
that is no use when you have to seize and hold the attention and
interest of people who really love music and painting. Therefore,
Oscar was handicapped by a false start, and got a reputation[6] for
shallowness and insincerity which he never retrieved until it was too
late.

[Footnote 5: I touched upon Oscar's ignorance of art sufficiently I
think, when I said in my book that he had learned all he knew of art
and of controversy from Whistler, and that his lectures on the
subject, even after sitting at the feet of the Master, were almost
worthless.]

[Footnote 6: Perfectly true, and a notable instance of Shaw's
insight.]

"Comedy: the criticism of morals and manners _viva voce_, was his real
forte. When he settled down to that he was great. But, as you found
when you approached Meredith about him, his initial mistake had
produced that 'rather low opinion of Wilde's capacities,' that
'deep-rooted contempt for the showman in him,' which persisted as a
first impression and will persist until the last man who remembers his
esthetic period has perished. The world has been in some ways so
unjust to