ter was notorious and who had already been in
the hands of the police on a similar charge.

This was not the only instance of unfairness in the conduct of the
prosecution. The Treasury put a youth called Atkins in the box, thus
declaring him to be at least a credible witness; but Atkins was proved
by Sir Edward Clarke to have perjured himself in the court in the most
barefaced way. In fact the Treasury witnesses against Wilde were all
blackmailers and people of the lowest character, with two exceptions.
The exceptions were a boy named Mavor and a youth named Shelley. With
regard to Mavor the judge admitted that no evidence had been offered
that he could place before the jury; but in his summing up he was
greatly affected by the evidence of Shelley. Shelley was a young man
who seemed to be afflicted with a species of religious mania. Mr.
Justice Charles gave great weight to his testimony. He invited the
jury to say that "although there was, in his correspondence which had
been read, evidence of excitability, to talk of him as a young man who
did not know what he was saying was to exaggerate the effect of his
letters." He went on to ask with much solemnity: "Why should this
young man have invented a tale, which must have been unpleasant to him
to present from the witness box?"

In the later trial before Mr. Justice Wills the Judge had to rule out
the evidence of Shelley _in toto_, because it was wholly without
corroboration. If the case before Mr. Justice Charles had not been
confused with the charges of conspiracy, there is no doubt that he too
would have ruled out the evidence of Shelley, and then his summing up
must have been entirely in favour of Wilde.

The singular malevolence of the prosecution also can be estimated by
their use of the so-called "literary argument." Wilde had written in a
magazine called _The Chameleon_. _The Chameleon_ contained an immoral
story, with which Wilde had nothing to do, and which he had
repudiated as offensive. Yet the prosecution tried to make him
responsible in some way for the immorality of a writing which he knew
nothing about.

Wilde had said two poems of Lord Alfred Douglas were "beautiful." The
prosecution declared that these poems were in essence a defence of the
vilest immorality, but is it not possible for the most passionate
poem, even the most vicious, to be "beautiful"? Nothing was ever
written more passionate than one of the poems of Sappho. Yet a
fragment has been s