uld have
endangered the book's reception.

* * * * *

Mr. Ross's letter to me concludes thus: "'De Profundis,' however, even in
its present form, is only a fragment. The whole work could not be
published in the lifetime of the present generation." This makes, within a
month, the third toothsome dish as to which I have had the exasperating
news that it is being reserved for that spoiled child, posterity. I may
say, however, that I do not regard "De Profundis" as one of Wilde's best
books. I was disappointed with it. It is too frequently insincere, and
the occasion was not one for pose. And it has another fault. I happened to
meet M. Henry Davray several times while he was translating the book into
French. M. Davray's knowledge of English is profound, and I was
accordingly somewhat disconcerted when one day, pointing to a sentence in
the original, he asked, "What does that mean?" I thought, "Is Davray at
last 'stumped'?" I examined the sentence with care, and then answered, "It
doesn't mean anything." "I thought so," said M. Davray. We looked at each
other. M. Davray was an old friend of Wilde's, and was one of the dozen
men who attended his desolating funeral. And I was an enthusiastic admirer
of Wilde's style at its best. We said no more. But a day or two later a
similar incident happened, and yet another.

* * * * *

Wilde's letters to Mr. Ross from prison are extremely good. They begin
sombrely, but after a time the wit lightens, and towards the end it is
playing continually. The first gleam of it is this: "I am going to take up
the study of German. Indeed prison seems to be the proper place for such
a study." On the subject of the natural life, he says a thing which is
exquisitely wise: "Stevenson's letters are most disappointing also. I see
that romantic surroundings are the worst surroundings for a romantic
writer. In Gower Street Stevenson would have written a new 'Trois
Mousquetaires,' in Samoa he writes letters to the _Times_ about Germans. I
see also the traces of a terrible strain to lead a natural life. To chop
wood with any advantage to oneself or profit to others, one should not be
able to describe the process. In point of fact the natural life is the
unconscious life. Stevenson merely extended the sphere of the artificial
by taking to digging. The whole dreary book has given me a lesson. If I
spend my future life reading Baudelaire in a cafe