ABSTRACT
Mr. Wilde’s volume of poems may be regarded as the evangel of a new creed. From other gospels it differs in coming after, instead of before, the cult it seeks to establish. It has thus the advantage of answering objection as well as propounding dogma, and its rebuke of irreverence, instead of being vague and discursive, is exact and to the point. One drawback from these advantages is that what should be promulgation of truth takes occasionally a form that might be mistaken for apology, and that querulous protest disappoints at times those who anticipate a clarion note of defiance. That the mind of the poet has been vexed, and the soul of the teacher troubled by ‘shallow wit’ is obvious. In one of those poems of fourteen lines which find occasional acceptance as sonnets Mr. Wilde declares:—
[quotes ‘Theoretikos’] The kind of neutrality indicated in the last line of this poem corresponds with and recalls that invoked by
the hero of a Western adventure with a ‘grizzly,’ who, without asking for any direct aid from the superior powers, urged them at least not to ‘side with the b’ar.’
