and you never do a wrong thing. Your
cynicism is simply a pose." His whole life was, however, a sin,
concealed behind a mask of _bonhommie_, a fashionable cheerfulness and
pleasantness of manner; a hollow _cadavre_ full of the dust and ashes of
a burnt-out life. One of Lord Henry Wotton's specious sophistries was
this: "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it." As
well wrap oneself confidingly in the folds of a boa-constrictor, hoping
to save one's life thereby. Lord Henry's apt pupil, Dorian Gray,
followed this advice scrupulously, only to increase the power of
temptation, which never after found him unwilling, until at last all of
his higher nature was suffocated. The author skilfully depicts the
insidious, baleful influence of Lord Henry Wotton, but attributes the
corruption of Dorian Gray's soul to a book which Lord Henry loaned him.
He says:--

"The Renaissance knew of strange manners of poisoning--poisoning by
a helmet, and a lighted torch, by an embroidered glove, and a
jewelled fan, by a gilded pomander, and by an amber chain. Dorian
Gray was poisoned by a book. There were moments when he looked on
evil simply as a mode through which he could realise his conception
of the beautiful."[23]

Dorian Gray had conceived the idea that his life was the product of many
preceding lives. The author causes him to make the following
reflections:--

"He used to wonder at the shallow psychology of those who conceive
the Ego in man as a thing simple, permanent, reliable, and of one
essence. To him, man was a being with myriad lives and myriad
sensations, a complex multiform creature that bore within itself
strange legacies of thought and passion, and whose very flesh was
tainted with the monstrous maladies of the dead. He loved to stroll
through the gaunt cold picture-gallery of his country house and
look at the various portraits of those whose blood flowed in his
veins. Here was Philip Herbert, described by Francis Osborne in his
_Memoirs on the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James_ as one
who was "caressed by the Court for his handsome face, which kept
him not long company." Was it young Herbert's life that he
sometimes led? Had some strange poisonous germ crept from body to
body till it had reached his own? Was it some dim sense of that
ruined grace that had made him so suddenly, and almost witho