the crafty incentives of those conspirators of reaction whose interest
lies in keeping the people enslaved. This has come about, in a large
measure, as much by the renown of his defects as by reason of his
fine quality.

The majority of men of talent lack the spirit and the gall to defy the
enemy on equal terms. But Wilde while possessing nobler faculties
had an undeniable vein in him of sheer youthful insolence. To the
impertinence of society he could oppose the impertinence of the
artist, and to the effrontery of the world he could offer the effrontery
of genius.

The power of personality, transcending any actual literary
achievement, is what remains in the mind when one has done
reading him, and this very faculty--of communicating to us, who
never saw him or heard him speak, the vivid impact of his
overbearing presence--is itself evidence of a rare kind of genius. It is
even a little ironical that he, above all men the punctilious and
precious literary craftsman, should ultimately dominate us not so
much by the magic of his art as by the spell of his wilful and wanton
individuality, and the situation is heightened still further by the
extraordinary variety of his works and their amazing perfection in
their different spheres.

One might easily conceive an artist capable of producing so
clean-cut and crystalline a comedy as "The Importance of Being Earnest,"
and so finished and flawless a tragedy as "Salome," disappearing
quite out of sight, in the manner so commended by Flaubert, behind
the shining objectivity of his flawless creations. But so far from
disappearing, Oscar Wilde manages to emphasise himself and his
imposing presence only the more startlingly and flagrantly, the more
the gem-like images he projects harden and glitter.

Astoundingly versatile as he was--capable of producing in "Reading
Gaol" the best tragic ballad since "The Ancient Mariner," and in
"Intentions" one of the best critical expositions of the open secret of
art ever written at all--he never permits us for a second to lose touch
with the wayward and resplendent figure, so full, for all its bravado,
of a certain disarming childishness, of his own defiant personality.

And the fact remains that, perfect in their various kinds though these
works of his are, they would never appeal to us as they do, and
Oscar Wilde would never be to us what he is, if it were not for the
predominance of this personal touch.

I sometimes catch myself wonde