TITE STREET, CHELSEA, July 1890.

VIII.

(Scots Observer, August 16, 1890.)

To the Editor of the Scots Observer.

SIR,--I am afraid I cannot enter into any newspaper discussion on the
subject of art with Mr. Whibley, partly because the writing of letters is
always a trouble to me, and partly because I regret to say that I do not
know what qualifications Mr. Whibley possesses for the discussion of so
important a topic. I merely noticed his letter because, I am sure
without in any way intending it, he made a suggestion about myself
personally that was quite inaccurate. His suggestion was that it must
have been painful to me to find that a certain section of the public, as
represented by himself and the critics of some religious publications,
had insisted on finding what he calls 'lots of morality' in my story of
The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Being naturally desirous of setting your readers right on a question of
such vital interest to the historian, I took the opportunity of pointing
out in your columns that I regarded all such criticisms as a very
gratifying tribute to the ethical beauty of the story, and I added that I
was quite ready to recognise that it was not really fair to ask of any
ordinary critic that he should be able to appreciate a work of art from
every point of view.

I still hold this opinion. If a man sees the artistic beauty of a thing,
he will probably care very little for its ethical import. If his
temperament is more susceptible to ethical than to aesthetic influences,
he will be blind to questions of style, treatment and the like. It takes
a Goethe to see a work of art fully, completely and perfectly, and I
thoroughly agree with Mr. Whibley when he says that it is a pity that
Goethe never had an opportunity of reading Dorian Gray. I feel quite
certain that he would have been delighted by it, and I only hope that
some ghostly publisher is even now distributing shadowy copies in the
Elysian fields, and that the cover of Gautier's copy is powdered with
gilt asphodels.

You may ask me, Sir, why I should care to have the ethical beauty of my
story recognised. I answer, Simply because it exists, because the thing
is there.

The chief merit of Madame Bovary is not the moral lesson that can be
found in it, any more than the chief merit of Salammbo is its archaeology;
but Flaubert was perfectly right in exposing the ignorance of those who
called the one immoral and the other inaccurate;