ABSTRACT
St. James’s Square, Holland Park W. 2.12.09 My dear Ross,… Life has lately been an orgy of Oscar Wilde’s prose. When I read some of it 15 years
ago I believed in English literature. An exploded myth! Alas! Outside Shakespeare and Milton there is very little that can rank as art and not too much that has any vital interest. Oscar will certainly count with Landor, Ruskin and Pater ifnot before them. He is indiscriminately brilliant, perhaps, and no doubt lost his head, but as you say he is the most variously gifted, the most capable prose writer of the 19th century.
