mewhere
in the classics? Yes, of course we have! But in what recondite author?
Ah--yes--no--yes, it _was_ in Horace! What an advantage it is to have
received a classical education! And how it will astonish the Yankees!
But we must not forget our Puppies, who have probably occupied their
time in lapping "something with strawberry in it." Puppy No. 1 (the Art
Puppy) has been telling Puppy No. 3 (the Doll Puppy) how much he admires
him. What is the answer? "I am less to you than your ivory Hermes or
your silver Faun. You will like them always. How long will you like me?
Till I have my first wrinkle, I suppose. I know now that when one loses
one's good looks, whatever they may be, one loses everything.... I am
jealous of the portrait you have painted of me. Why should it keep what
I must lose?... Oh, if it was only the other way! If the picture could
only change, and I could be always what I am now!"[6]

No sooner said than done! The picture _does_ change: the original
doesn't. Here's a situation for you! Theophile Gautier could have made
it romantic, entrancing, beautiful. Mr. Stevenson could have made it
convincing, humorous, pathetic. Mr. Anstey could have made it
screamingly funny. It has been reserved for Mr. Oscar Wilde to make it
dull and nasty. The promising youth plunges into every kind of mean
depravity, and ends in being "cut" by fast women and vicious men. He
finishes with murder: the New Voluptuousness always leads up to
blood-shedding--that is part of the cant. The gore and gashes wherein
Mr. Rider Haggard takes a chaste delight are the natural diet for a
cultivated palate which is tired of mere licentiousness. And every
wickedness of filthiness committed by Dorian Gray is faithfully
registered upon his face in the picture; but his living features are
undisturbed and unmarred by his inward vileness. This is the story which
Mr. Oscar Wilde has tried to tell; a very lame story it is, and very
lamely it is told.

Why has he told it? There are two explanations; and, so far as we can
see, not more than two. Not to give pleasure to his readers: the thing
is too clumsy, too tedious, and--alas! that we should say it--too
stupid. Perhaps it was to shock his readers, in order that they might
cry Fie! upon him and talk about him, much as Mr. Grant Allen recently
tried in the _Universal Review_ to arouse, by a licentious theory of the
sexual relations, an attention which is refused to his popular chatter
about other men