has in hand. He is indifferent to others. I
write because it gives me the greatest possible artistic pleasure to
write. If my work pleases the few I am gratified. If it does not, it
causes me no pain. As for the mob, I have no desire to be a popular
novelist. It is far too easy.

Your critic then, Sir, commits the absolutely unpardonable crime of
trying to confuse the artist with his subject-matter. For this, Sir,
there is no excuse at all.

Of one who is the greatest figure in the world's literature since Greek
days, Keats remarked that he had as much pleasure in conceiving the evil
as he had in conceiving the good. Let your reviewer, Sir, consider the
bearings of Keats's fine criticism, for it is under these conditions that
every artist works. One stands remote from one's subject-matter. One
creates it and one contemplates it. The further away the subject-matter
is, the more freely can the artist work.

Your reviewer suggests that I do not make it sufficiently clear whether I
prefer virtue to wickedness or wickedness to virtue. An artist, Sir, has
no ethical sympathies at all. Virtue and wickedness are to him simply
what the colours on his palette are to the painter. They are no more and
they are no less. He sees that by their means a certain artistic effect
can be produced and he produces it. Iago may be morally horrible and
Imogen stainlessly pure. Shakespeare, as Keats said, had as much delight
in creating the one as he had in creating the other.

It was necessary, Sir, for the dramatic development of this story to
surround Dorian Gray with an atmosphere of moral corruption. Otherwise
the story would have had no meaning and the plot no issue. To keep this
atmosphere vague and indeterminate and wonderful was the aim of the
artist who wrote the story. I claim, Sir, that he has succeeded. Each
man sees his own sin in Dorian Gray. What Dorian Gray's sins are no one
knows. He who finds them has brought them.

In conclusion, Sir, let me say how really deeply I regret that you should
have permitted such a notice as the one I feel constrained to write on to
have appeared in your paper. That the editor of the St. James's Gazette
should have employed Caliban as his art-critic was possibly natural. The
editor of the Scots Observer should not have allowed Thersites to make
mows in his review. It is unworthy of so distinguished a man of
letters.--I am, etc.,

OSCAR WILDE.

16 TITE STREET, CHELS