al in my story. Now, I must candidly confess that I do
not know what 'vamping' is. I see, from time to time, mysterious
advertisements in the newspapers about 'How to Vamp,' but what vamping
really means remains a mystery to me--a mystery that, like all other
mysteries, I hope some day to explore.

However, I do not propose to discuss the absurd terms used by modern
journalism. What I want to say is that, so far from wishing to emphasise
any moral in my story, the real trouble I experienced in writing the
story was that of keeping the extremely obvious moral subordinate to the
artistic and dramatic effect.

When I first conceived the idea of a young man selling his soul in
exchange for eternal youth--an idea that is old in the history of
literature, but to which I have given new form--I felt that, from an
aesthetic point of view, it would be difficult to keep the moral in its
proper secondary place; and even now I do not feel quite sure that I have
been able to do so. I think the moral too apparent. When the book is
published in a volume I hope to correct this defect.

As for what the moral is, your critic states that it is this--that when a
man feels himself becoming 'too angelic' he should rush out and make a
'beast of himself.' I cannot say that I consider this a moral. The real
moral of the story is that all excess, as well as all renunciation,
brings its punishment, and this moral is so far artistically and
deliberately suppressed that it does not enunciate its law as a general
principle, but realises itself purely in the lives of individuals, and so
becomes simply a dramatic element in a work of art, and not the object of
the work of art itself.

Your critic also falls into error when he says that Dorian Gray, having a
'cool, calculating, conscienceless character,' was inconsistent when he
destroyed the picture of his own soul, on the ground that the picture did
not become less hideous after he had done what, in his vanity, he had
considered his first good action. Dorian Gray has not got a cool,
calculating, conscienceless character at all. On the contrary, he is
extremely impulsive, absurdly romantic, and is haunted all through his
life by an exaggerated sense of conscience which mars his pleasures for
him and warns him that youth and enjoyment are not everything in the
world. It is finally to get rid of the conscience that had dogged his
steps from year to year that he destroys the picture; and thus