The Project Gutenberg eBook, Miscellanies, by Oscar Wilde, Edited by
Robert Ross

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Miscellanies

Author: Oscar Wilde

Release Date: November 16, 2004 [eBook #14062]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MISCELLANIES***

Transcribed from the 1908 edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

MISCELLANIES BY OSCAR WILDE

DEDICATION: TO WALTER LEDGER

Since these volumes are sure of a place in your marvellous library I
trust that with your unrivalled knowledge of the various editions of
Wilde you may not detect any grievous error whether of taste or type, of
omission or commission. But should you do so you must blame the editor,
and not those who so patiently assisted him, the proof readers, the
printers, or the publishers. Some day, however, I look forward to your
bibliography of the author, in which you will be at liberty to criticise
my capacity for anything except regard and friendship for
yourself.--Sincerely yours,

ROBERT ROSS

May 25, 1908.

INTRODUCTION

The concluding volume of any collected edition is unavoidably fragmentary
and desultory. And if this particular volume is no exception to a
general tendency, it presents points of view in the author's literary
career which may have escaped his greatest admirers and detractors. The
wide range of his knowledge and interests is more apparent than in some
of his finished work.

What I believed to be only the fragment of an essay on Historical
Criticism was already in the press, when accidentally I came across the
remaining portions, in Wilde's own handwriting; it is now complete though
unhappily divided in this edition. {0a} Any doubt as to its
authenticity, quite apart from the calligraphy, would vanish on reading
such a characteristic passage as the following:--' . . . For, it was in
vain that the middle ages strove to guard the buried spirit of progress.
When the dawn of the Greek spirit arose, the sepulchre was empty, the
grave clothes laid aside. Humanity had risen from the dead.' It was
only Wilde who could contrive a literary conceit of that description; but
read