has really no critical instinct
about literature and literary work, which, in one who writes about
literature is, I need hardly say, a much graver fault than malice of any
kind.

Finally, Sir, allow me to say this. Such an article as you have
published really makes me despair of the possibility of any general
culture in England. Were I a French author, and my book brought out in
Paris, there is not a single literary critic in France on any paper of
high standing who would think for a moment of criticising it from an
ethical standpoint. If he did so he would stultify himself, not merely
in the eyes of all men of letters, but in the eyes of the majority of
the public.

You have yourself often spoken against Puritanism. Believe me, Sir,
Puritanism is never so offensive and destructive as when it deals with
art matters. It is there that it is radically wrong. It is this
Puritanism, to which your critic has given expression, that is always
marring the artistic instinct of the English. So far from encouraging
it, you should set yourself against it, and should try to teach your
critics to recognise the essential difference between art and life.

The gentleman who criticised my book is in a perfectly hopeless
confusion about it, and your attempt to help him out by proposing that
the subject-matter of art should be limited does not mend matters. It is
proper that limitation should be placed on action. It is not proper that
limitation should be placed on art. To art belong all things that are
and all things that are not, and even the editor of a London paper has
no right to restrain the freedom of art in the selection of
subject-matter.

I now trust, Sir, that these attacks on me and my book will cease. There
are forms of advertisement that are unwarranted and unwarrantable.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

OSCAR WILDE.

16, Tite Street, S.W., June 27th.

[9] June 28th.

* * * * *

_The public ... is always asking a writer why he does not write like
somebody else ... quite oblivious of the fact that if he did anything of
the kind he would cease to be an artist._

* * * * *

Once more the Editor attempted to justify his reviewer's trenchant
criticism:--

Mr. Oscar Wilde makes his third and, we presume, his final reply to the
criticism which we published on "The Picture of Dorian Gray." Somewhat
grudgingly, but in suff