he
possessed.

[22] Pp. 65, 66.

[23] p. 77.

[24] p. 75.

[25] p. 68.

[26] p. 74.

* * * * *

_The fact of a man being a poisoner is nothing against his prose._

* * * * *

[Illustration]

PARALLEL.
Joe, the Fat Boy in Pickwick, startles the Old Lady;
Oscar, the Fad Boy in Lippincott's, startles
Mrs. Grundy:--
_Oscar, the Fad Boy_: "I want to make your flesh
creep!"

_Reproduced by special permission of the proprietors
of "Punch."_

PUNCH on "DORIAN GRAY."

By special permission of the Proprietors of _Punch_ the following
review is reproduced from the issue of that journal dated July
19th, 1890.

OUR BOOKING OFFICE.

The Baron has read Oscar Wilde's wildest and Oscarest work, called
"Dorian Gray," a weird sensational romance, complete in one number of
_Lippincott's Magazine_. The Baron recommends any body who revels in
_diablerie_, to begin it about half-past ten, and to finish it at one
sitting up; but those who do not so revel he advises either not to read
it at all, or to choose the daytime, and take it in homoeopathic doses.

The portrait represents the soul of the beautiful Ganymede-like Dorian
Gray, whose youth and beauty last to the end, while his soul, like John
Brown's, "goes marching on," into the Wilderness of Sin. It becomes at
last a devilled soul. And then Dorian sticks a knife into it, as any
ordinary mortal might do, and a fork also, and next morning

"Lifeless but 'hideous,' he lay," while the portrait has recovered the
perfect beauty which it possessed when it first left the artist's easel.

If Oscar intended an allegory, the finish is dreadfully wrong. Does he
mean that, by sacrificing his earthly life, Dorian Gray atones for his
infernal sins, and so purifies his soul by suicide? "Heavens! I am no
preacher," says the Baron, "and perhaps Oscar didn't mean anything at
all, except to give us a sensation, to show how like Bulwer Lytton's
old-world style he could make his descriptions and his dialogue, and
what an easy thing it is to frighten the respectable Mrs. Grundy with a
Bogie." The style is decidedly Lyttonerary. His aphorisms are Wilde, yet
forced. Mr. Oscar Wilde says of his story, "it is poisonous if you like,
but you cannot deny that it is also perfect, and perfection is what we
artists aim at."[27] Perhaps, but "we artists" do not always hit what we
aim at, and despite his co