ABSTRACT
The tragedy of Mr. Oscar Wilde’s life is ended. The labouring of moralities would be quite superfluous, but a word or two may be said upon the sum of his achievement. Mr. Wilde led a movement in the eighties, which, in spite of its absurdities, killed much vulgar Philistinism. He took up the aesthetic fashion rather than made it; for its beginnings are to be found in the paintings of Rossetti and Burne-Jones, the art work of William Morris, and the writings of Pater. Mr. Whistler’s well-known gibe when he met Mr. Du Maurier and Mr. Wilde together, ‘Which of you invented the other?’ was not a historical definition exactly. The Irishman’s attacks on social conventions recalls, in other respects, that of Disraeli the Younger, though he was a much smaller man. He was audacious in costume, and succeeded through an elaboration of wit. ‘I felt disappointed with the Atlantic’ will probably remain the most easily remembered saying of Mr. Wilde’s. He made many better jests; but they depended for their point on circumstance, and were frequently humorous inversions of the commonplace.
