the world's famous courtesans, bandits and assassins, he contributed by his vices no less than by his virtues to the precious sum of life's interests. Digest this "unedifying" truth as we may, all mankind loves a villain, and it is a commonplace of experience that the most atrocious criminal, if he keeps a stiff upper lip and steps out with appropriate bravado, may go to his execution amid the roses and love letters and tears and adulation of admiring thousands.
Certain of Wilde's friends who admit the numerous and gross defects in his character attempt to make a sharp distinction between his life and his works. Mr. Frank Harris, for instance, says: "If his life was given overmuch to self-indulgence, it must be remembered that his writings and conversation were singularly kindly, singularly amiable, singularly pure. No harsh or coarse or bitter word ever passed those eloquent laughing lips. If he served beauty in her myriad forms he only showed in his works the beauty that was amiable and of good report."
This line of defense is, I think, absolutely untenable. It is as untenable as the contention that his "downfall" was due to a temporary aberration or a progressive disease of the brain. There was nothing fortuitous in Wilde's downfall, except the discovery of his state of mind by the law-enforcing portion of the British public. His downfall was the logical conclusion of his career in a country which disciplines his state of mind in the criminal court. Spiritually he was no more "down" in prison than he was while he scintillated in the drawing-room. His conversation and his writings are just as "abnormal" as his career. In his poems, in his comedies, in "Dorian Gray," in his critical discourses, he paints his portrait, he displays his
