ABSTRACT
The first thing you ask is for me to write to you about Oscar Wilde, and this I can do easily, but I am afraid that my opinions regarding himwill not please you, for they are not the opinions you hold. You would put him in the first class as a writer and I should put him in the third or fourth. It is not a long time since I read a book of his called Intentions, and it seems to me very thin and casual, without depth, therefore, unoriginal; no man is original in the surface of his mind; to be original we must go deep, right down to the roots, and Oscar Wilde’s talent seems to me essentially rootless; something growing in a glass in a little water. I was struck by his lack of style; by style, I mean rhythm. It is all quite clear and correct but his sentences do not sway. There is no current and I return to glass for an image, it is all very glassy. He had a certain dramatic gift, he moves his characters deftly and his dialogue is not without grace. It is often to the point. He had a pretty ingenious drawing-room wit, and these qualities enabled him to write plays that are not intolerable to a man of letters, and superficial enough to attract audiences. If I understand your letter rightly you seem to think that Wilde’s abnormal impulses mark him out as an interesting subject for literary study. It might be so if Wilde were a great writer.1 He is that in your opinion, but in my opinion, as I have already said, he is in the third or fourth class and, therefore, not worth troubling about, and I do not think that anybody would have troubled about him if the Marquis of Queensbury had not written him a post card; had it not been for that unlucky post card Wilde and his literature would be sleeping comfortably in the dust at the bottom of an almost forgotten drawer in company with Frank Miles’ drawings. I never had any other opinions about Wilde than those I am expressing in this letter, and as time has confirmed me in my opinions
regarding him, you will understand that I am more unfitted than perhaps anybody else to write an article on your biography.…
Very sincerely yours, GEORGE MOORE
