in his
attempt to kill conscience Dorian Gray kills himself.

Your critic then talks about 'obtrusively cheap scholarship.' Now,
whatever a scholar writes is sure to display scholarship in the
distinction of style and the fine use of language; but my story contains
no learned or pseudo-learned discussions, and the only literary books
that it alludes to are books that any fairly educated reader may be
supposed to be acquainted with, such as the Satyricon of Petronius
Arbiter, or Gautier's Emaux et Camees. Such books as Le Conso's
Clericalis Disciplina belong not to culture, but to curiosity. Anybody
may be excused for not knowing them.

Finally, let me say this--the aesthetic movement produced certain curious
colours, subtle in their loveliness and fascinating in their almost
mystical tone. They were, and are, our reaction against the crude
primaries of a doubtless more respectable but certainly less cultivated
age. My story is an essay on decorative art. It reacts against the
crude brutality of plain realism. It is poisonous if you like, but you
cannot deny that it is also perfect, and perfection is what we artists
aim at.--I remain, Sir, your obedient servant, OSCAR WILDE.

16 TITE STREET, June 30.

VI. MR. WILDE'S REJOINDER

(Scots Observer, July 12, 1890.)

To the Editor of the Scots Observer.

SIR,--You have published a review of my story, The Picture of Dorian
Gray. As this review is grossly unjust to me as an artist, I ask you to
allow me to exercise in your columns my right of reply.

Your reviewer, Sir, while admitting that the story in question is
'plainly the work of a man of letters,' the work of one who has 'brains,
and art, and style,' yet suggests, and apparently in all seriousness,
that I have written it in order that it should be read by the most
depraved members of the criminal and illiterate classes. Now, Sir, I do
not suppose that the criminal and illiterate classes ever read anything
except newspapers. They are certainly not likely to be able to
understand anything of mine. So let them pass, and on the broad question
of why a man of letters writes at all let me say this.

The pleasure that one has in creating a work of art is a purely personal
pleasure, and it is for the sake of this pleasure that one creates. The
artist works with his eye on the object. Nothing else interests him.
What people are likely to say does not even occur to him.

He is fascinated by what he