f brilliant failures, but we are the greatest
talkers since the Greeks." When dinner was over he read me from the proofs
of _The Decay of Lying_ and when he came to the sentence: "Schopenhauer
has analysed the pessimism that characterises modern thought, but Hamlet
invented it. The world has become sad because a puppet was once
melancholy," I said, "Why do you change 'sad' to 'melancholy'?" He replied
that he wanted a full sound at the close of his sentence, and I thought it
no excuse and an example of the vague impressiveness that spoilt his
writing for me. Only when he spoke, or when his writing was the mirror of
his speech, or in some simple fairy tale, had he words exact enough to
hold a subtle ear. He alarmed me, though not as Henley did, for I never
left his house thinking myself fool or dunce. He flattered the intellect
of every man he liked; he made me tell him long Irish stories and
compared my art of storytelling to Homer's; and once when he had described
himself as writing in the census paper "age 19, profession genius,
infirmity talent" the other guest, a young journalist fresh from Oxford or
Cambridge, said, "What should I have written?" and was told that it should
have been "profession talent, infirmity genius." When, however, I called,
wearing shoes a little too yellow--unblackened leather had just become
fashionable--I realized their extravagance when I saw his eyes fixed upon
them; and another day Wilde asked me to tell his little boy a fairy story,
and I had but got as far as "Once upon a time there was a giant" when the
little boy screamed and ran out of the room. Wilde looked grave and I was
plunged into the shame of clumsiness that afflicts the young. When I asked
for some literary gossip for some provincial newspaper, that paid me a few
shillings a month, he explained very explicitly that writing literary
gossip was no job for a gentleman.

Though to be compared to Homer passed the time pleasantly, I had not been
greatly perturbed had he stopped me with: "Is it a long story?" as Henley
would certainly have done. I was abashed before him as wit and man of the
world alone. I remember that he deprecated the very general belief in his
success or his efficiency, and I think with sincerity. One form of success
had gone: he was no more the lion of the season and he had not discovered
his gift for writing comedy, yet I think I knew him at the happiest moment
of his life. No scandal had touched his name, his