ring what my own feeling would be
as to the value of these things--of the "Soul of Man," for instance, or
"Intentions," or the Comedies, or the Poems--if the unthinkable
thing could be done, and the emergence of this irresistible figure
from behind it all could be drastically eliminated. I find myself
conscious, at these times, of a faint disturbing doubt; as though after
all, in spite of their jewel-like perfection, these wonderful and varied
achievements were not quite the real thing, were not altogether in
the "supreme manner." There seems to me--at the moments when
this doubt arises--something too self-consciously (how shall I put it?)
_artistic_ about these performances, something strained and forced
and far-fetched, which separates them from the large inevitable
utterances of classic genius.

I am ready to confess that I am not sure that this feeling is a matter
of personal predilection or whether it has the larger and graver
weight behind it of the traditional instincts of humanity, instincts out
of which spring our only permanent judgments. What I feel at any
rate is this: that there is an absence in Wilde's writings of that large
cool spaciousness, produced by the magical influence of earth and
sky and sea, of which one is always conscious in the greater masters.

"No gentleman," he is said to have remarked once, "ever looks out
of the window"; and it is precisely this "never looking out of the
window" that produces his most serious limitations.

In one respect I must acknowledge myself grateful to Wilde, even
for this very avoidance of what might be called the "magical"
element in things. His clear-cut palpable images, carved, as one so
often feels, in ebony or ivory or gold, offer an admirable relief, like
the laying of one's hand upon pieces of Hellenic statuary, after
wandering among the vague mists and "beached margents."

Certainly if all that one saw when one "looked out of the window"
were Irish fairies with dim hair drifting down pallid rivers, there
would be some reason for drawing the curtains close and toying in
the lamp-light with cameo-carved profiles of Antinous and
Cleopatra!

But nature has more to give us than the elfish fantasies, charming as
these may be, of Celtic legend--more to give us than those "brown
fauns" and "hoofed Centaurs" and milk-white peacocks, which
Wilde loves to paint with his Tiepolo-like brush. The dew of the
morning does not fall less lightly because real autumns b