ABSTRACT
Mr. Oscar Wilde is inclined to be peevish with his critics. Yet his critics were very patient with him. He wrote what he called a play, and he peppered it with not unamiable paradox, and diverted a considerable number of persons. But it takes more than this to convert an adventurous Bœotian into the ideal blend of, let us say, Goethe, Shakespeare, and Baffo, which appears to be Mr. Wilde’s own image of himself. Mr. Wilde has in his time aroused the gaiety of English-speaking countries. It delights him-as the performance delights the spectators-to masque as an Athenian. But he is no Athenian. George Meredith brands one of his creations as ‘An Epicurean whom Epicurus would have scourged out of his Garden.’ The Athenians would not have been tolerant of this sham Athenian. Mr. Wilde seems most to resemble the man in Charles de Bernard’s ablest novel, who always has Art upon his lips because he had so little in his soul. Mr. Wilde has called his play a work of art. That of course it is not, could not be. Mr. Wilde is many things needless to enumerate, but he is not an artist. His utterances upon art must be regarded with a delicate disdain.
