ng, for if Cochrane had talked, I would have remembered an amusing
sentence or two; but he was certainly sympathetic. A couple of days later
I received a letter from Lionel Johnson, denouncing Wilde with great
bitterness. He had "a cold scientific intellect;" he got a "sense of
triumph and power; at every dinner-table he dominated, from the knowledge
that he was guilty of that sin which, more than any other possible to man,
would turn all those people against him if they but knew." He wrote in the
mood of his poem, _To the Destroyer of a Soul_, addressed to Wilde, as I
have always believed, though I know nothing of the circumstance that made
him write it.

I might have known that Wilde's phantasy had taken some tragic turn, and
that he was meditating upon possible disaster, but one took all his words
for play--had he not called insincerity "a mere multiplication of the
personality" or some such words? I had met a man who had found him in a
barber's shop in Venice, and heard him explain, "I am having my hair
curled that I may resemble Nero;" and when, as editor of an Irish
anthology, I had asked leave to quote "Tread gently, she is near under the
snow," he had written that I might do so if I pleased, but his most
characteristic poem was that sonnet with the lines

"Lo! with a little rod
I did but touch the honey's romance--
And must I lose a soul's inheritance."

When in London for my play I had asked news from an actor who had seen him
constantly. "He is in deep melancholy," was the answer. "He says that he
tries to sleep away as much of life as possible, only leaving his bed at
two or three in the afternoon, and spending the rest of the day at the
Cafe Royal. He has written what he calls the best short story in the
world, and will have it that he repeats to himself on getting out of bed
and before every meal. 'Christ came from a white plain to a purple city,
and as he passed through the first street, he heard voices overhead, and
saw a young man lying drunk upon a window sill, "Why do you waste your
soul in drunkenness?" He said. "Lord, I was a leper and You healed me,
what else can I do?" A little further through the town he saw a young man
following a harlot, and said, "Why do you dissolve your soul in
debauchery?" and the young man answered, "Lord, I was blind, and You
healed me, what else can I do?" At last in the middle of the city He saw
an old man crouching, weeping upon the ground,