for that purpose in a fiery sort of
brandy of his own whimsical wit. If we don't become "like little
children"; in other words like jovial, middle-aged swashbucklers, and
protest our belief in Flying Pigs, Pusses in Boots, Jacks on the top
of Beanstalks, Old Women who live in Shoes, Fairies, Fandangos,
Prester Johns, and Blue Devils, there is no hope for us and we are
condemned to a dreadful purgatory of pedantic and atheistic dullness,
along with Li Hung Chang, George Eliot, Herbert Spencer and other
heretics whose view of the Dogma of the Immortality of the Soul
differs from that of Mr. Chesterton.

87. OSCAR WILDE. INTENTIONS. THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST. DE
PROFUNDIS.

"Intentions" is perhaps the most original of all Wilde's remarkable
works.

His supreme art, as he himself well knew, was, after all, the art of
conversation. One might even put it that his greatest achievement in
life was just the achievement of being brazenly and shamelessly what
he naturally was--especially in conversation. To call him a "poseur"
with the implication that he pretended or assumed a manner, were just
as absurd as to call a tiger striped with the implication that the
beast deliberately "put on" that mark of distinction.

If it is a pose to enjoy the sensation of one's own spontaneous
gestures, Wilde was indeed the worst of pretenders. But the stupid
gravity of many generals, judges and archbishops is not more natural
to them than his exquisite insolence was to him.

Below the wit and provocative persiflage of "Intentions" there is a
deep and true conception of the nature of art--a conception which
might well serve as the "philosophy" of much of the most interesting
and arresting of modern work.

Wilde's extraordinary charm largely depends upon something invincibly
boyish and youthful in him. His personality, as he himself says, has
become almost symbolic--symbolic, that is, of a certain shameless and
beautiful defiance of the world, expressed in an unconquerable
insolence worthy of the very spirit of hard, brave, flagrant youth.

"The Importance of Being Earnest" is perhaps the gayest, least
responsible, and most adorably witty of all English comedies; just as
"Salome" is the most richly colored and smoulderingly sensual of all
modern tragedies. One actually touches with one's fingers the
feasting-cups of the Tetrarch; and the passion of the daughter of
Herodias hangs round one like an exotic perfume.

In "De Profun