ABSTRACT
The downward course of a certain current in English literature and art has probably not reached an end in Oscar Wilde’s Salomé. Some one will, doubtless, arise who shall be as incoherent as Blake, as hysterical as Rossetti, as incapable of decent reserve as Swinburne, and as great a humbug as Wilde. But it is doubtful whether the latter’s cleverness in patching up sham monsters can go much farther. A large part of his material he gets from the Bible, a little has once belonged to Flaubert. He borrows from Maeterlinck his trick of repeating stupid phrases until a glimpse of meaning seems almost a flash of genius. But it must be admitted that he adds something of his own, and that what he has taken bears but the same relation to what he has made of it as does the farmer’s pumpkin to the small boy’s bogy lantern. A single example will perhaps suffice to show the nature of his improvements. There is a vulgar simile that likens a pair of black eyes to ‘burnt holes in a blanket.’ This Mr. Wilde expands into:—‘it is his eyes above all that are terrible. They are like black holes burnt by torches in a tapestry of Tyre.’ The play was originally written in French, and Mr. Wilde has been so happy as to secure a noble lord as his translator into English.…
