allow me to draw your attention to a very interesting
example of the ethics of modern journalism, a quality of which we have
all heard so much and seen so little?

About a month ago Mr. T. P. O'Connor published in the Sunday Sun some
doggerel verses entitled 'The Shamrock,' and had the amusing impertinence
to append my name to them as their author. As for some years past all
kinds of scurrilous personal attacks had been made on me in Mr.
O'Connor's newspapers, I determined to take no notice at all of the
incident.

Enraged, however, by my courteous silence, Mr. O'Connor returns to the
charge this week. He now solemnly accuses me of plagiarising the poem he
had the vulgarity to attribute to me. {172}

This seems to me to pass beyond even those bounds of coarse humour and
coarser malice that are, by the contempt of all, conceded to the ordinary
journalist, and it is really very distressing to find so low a standard
of ethics in a Sunday newspaper.--I remain, Sir, your obedient servant,

OSCAR WILDE.
September 18.

II.

(Pall Mall Gazette, September 25, 1894.)

To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette.

SIR,--The assistant editor of the Sunday Sun, on whom seems to devolve
the arduous duty of writing Mr. T. P. O'Connor's apologies for him, does
not, I observe with regret, place that gentleman's conduct in any more
attractive or more honourable light by the attempted explanation that
appears in the letter published in your issue of today. For the future
it would be much better if Mr. O'Connor would always write his own
apologies. That he can do so exceedingly well no one is more ready to
admit than myself. I happen to possess one from him.

The assistant editor's explanation, stripped of its unnecessary verbiage,
amounts to this: It is now stated that some months ago, somebody, whose
name, observe, is not given, forwarded to the office of the Sunday Sun a
manuscript in his own handwriting, containing some fifth-rate verses with
my name appended to them as their author. The assistant editor frankly
admits that they had grave doubts about my being capable of such an
astounding production. To me, I must candidly say, it seems more
probable that they never for a single moment believed that the verses
were really from my pen. Literary instinct is, of course, a very rare
thing, and it would be too much to expect any true literary instinct to
be found among the members of the staff of an ordinary newspaper;