ABSTRACT
Time was (it was in the ’70’s) when we talked about Mr. Oscar Wilde; time came (it came in the ’80’s) when he tried to write poetry and, more adventurous, we tried to read it; time is when we had forgotten him, or only remember him as the late editor of The Woman’s World-a part for which he was singularly unfitted, if we are to judge him by the work which he has been allowed to publish in Lippincott's Magazine and which Messrs. Ward, Lock & Co. have not been ashamed to circulate in Great Britain. Not being curious in ordure, and not wishing to offend the nostrils of decent persons, we do not propose to analyse The Picture of Dorian Gray: that would be to advertise the developments of an esoteric prurience. Whether the Treasury or the VigilanceSociety will think it worth while to prosecute Mr. Oscar Wilde or Messrs. Ward, Lock & Co., we do not know; but on the whole we hope they will not. The puzzle is that a young man of decent parts, who enjoyed (when he was at Oxford) the opportunity of associating with gentlemen, should put his name (such as it is) to so stupid and vulgar a piece of work. Let nobody read it in the hope of finding witty paradox or racy wickedness. The writer airs his cheap research among the garbage of the French Décadents like any drivelling pedant, and he bores you unmercifully with his prosy rigmaroles about the beauty of the Body and the corruption of the Soul. The grammar is better than Ouïda’s; the erudition equal; but in every other respect we prefer the talented lady who broke off with ‘pious aposiopesis’ when she touched upon ‘the horrors which are described in the pages of Suetonius and Livy’—not to mention the yet worse infamies believed by many scholars to be accurately portrayed in the lost works of Plutarch, Venus, and Nicodemus, especially Nicodemus.
