recreate life in a way that was hidden from me,
before. 'A dream of form in days of thought:'--who is it who says that?
I forget; but it is what Dorian Gray has been to me. The merely visible
presence of this lad--for he seems to me little more than a lad, though
he is really over twenty--his merely visible presence--ah! I wonder can
you realise all that that means? Unconsciously he defines for me the
lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in it all the passion
of the romantic spirit, all the perfection of the spirit that is Greek.
The harmony of soul and body--how much that is! We in our madness have
separated the two, and have invented a realism that is vulgar, an
ideality that is void. Harry! if you only knew what Dorian Gray is to
me! You remember that landscape of mine, for which Agnew offered me such
a huge price, but which I would not part with? It is one of the best
things I have ever done. And why is it so? Because, while I was painting
it, Dorian Gray sat beside me. Some subtle influence passed from him to
me, and for the first time in my life I saw in the plain woodland the
wonder I had always looked for, and always missed."

"Basil, this is extraordinary! I must see Dorian Gray."

Hallward got up from the seat, and walked up and down the garden. After
some time he came back. "Harry," he said, "Dorian Gray is to me simply
a motive in art. You might see nothing in him. I see everything in him.
He is never more present in my work than when no image of him is there.
He is a suggestion, as I have said, of a new manner. I find him in the
curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and subtleties of certain
colours. That is all."

"Then why won't you exhibit his portrait?" asked Lord Henry.

"Because, without intending it, I have put into it some expression of
all this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, I have never
cared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He shall never know
anything about it. But the world might guess it; and I will not bare my
soul to their shallow prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under
their microscope. There is too much of myself in the thing, Harry--too
much of myself!"

"Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is
for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions."

"I hate them for it," cried Hallward. "An artist should create beautiful
things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live