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Oscar Wilde, about whom so much is now being said, first achieved notoriety as a prostate apostle and then as the leader of the then infantile aesthetic craze. He carried his aesthetic peculiarities so far that he became the subject of Du Maurier's caricaturing pencil and Gilbert's satirizing fun. That may have been what he was trying for. Neither the caricaturist nor the satirist diminished the ardor with which Wilde pursued what was vaguely called aestheticism. The Bunthornes of "Patience" made up in exact imitation of Wilde, and he posed in the lobbies of the same theatres and composed phrases which outdid, in lily-like languor, the phrases Gilbert and thought to be satires. One of the songs of "Patience" which seemed to contain a more or less pointed allusion to Wilde ran:

Then a sentimental passion of a vegetable fashionShould excite your languid spleen;An attachment, a la Plato, for a bashful young potato,Or a not too French French bean;Though the Philistines may jostle, you will rank as an apostleIn the sentimental band;If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lilyIn your mediaeval hand;And every one will sayAs you walk your mystic way,"If he's content with a vegetable love that would certainly not suit me.Why, what a most particularly pure young man this pure young man must be."

The more limp Du Maurier drew his caricature, the limper was Oscar when he confronted the next assemblage; the longer Du Maurier made his people's hair, the longer Wilde stayed away from the barber's.

Up to that time, fifteen years ago, Wilde had done little else to attract attention to himself. He was known to be the son of exceptionally clever parents and winner of the Newdigate at Oxford, but, besides cleverly advertising himself and writing a few verses, he had done no clever original work, and was not seriously considered. His reputation as lecturer, man of fashion, wit, poet, novelist, essayist, playwright has been made, in most particulars, in the last half dozen years, all since his lecturing tour in this country.

He came here about twelve years ago, frankly advertised as a freak lecturing on "aestheticism." He wore knee breeches, silk hose, lace cuffs, and was otherwise variously freakish in his dress. At Boston a half hundred Harvard boys marched into his lecture hall dressed as he was, each carrying a lily. Wilde's noted imperturbability did not desert him. He merely lisped, "How tenderly droll!" and went on with his lecture.

In a Western city he was the guest of a club, among whose members were a number of stout drinkers. They undertook to "tank up the aesthete," as they expressed it. The process was long. As the sun was breaking into the club windows, Wilde looked about the room strewn with the fallen braves, and said to one man still able to comprehend speech:"We've had a charmingly quiet little evening. Don't you feel like a bit of a run about town before breakfast?"

But those who met him under normal conditions found Mr. Wilde a witty and engaging talker; unusually well informed on a wide range of literary and art subjects, and quite able to care for himself in any mnental encounter. The public at large, not knowing this of him, refused to accept him or his cult seriously, and Wilde returned to England richer only in experiences and a few hundred pounds. He had apologists, not of his class, for his "lilylike" eccentricities. In 1880 Edmund Yates wrote of him in the London World:

"He came out with a great splurge; his hair, his watch fob, his costume, and his walking stick started him well; the living up to the lily, and his disappointment with the Atlantic, and other quaint phrases carried him on for a bit; but he made somewhat of a failure in his lecturing tour in America, and has not been much heard of since his return, so that there was a general impression that though he had come out well, he had gone in again. But those who were well acquainted with him knew better, and had perfect reliance on his unquestioniable cleverness and his determination to make a mark. They felt that in these days, when every gate is thronged with suitors, a little charlatanism to call attention to one's self is not merely admissible, but is necessary; granted always that when the attention has been attracted there is something really worth seeing in the show. Mr. Wilde has justified these good opinions by working unobtrusively, indeed, but always well."

At that time Wilde had been married several years to Miss Constance Lloyd, and was living in Chelsea in a house decorated in "harmonies of green and blue," and furnished with quaint Old World pieces, but he was doing little or nothing to attract attention; even "Dorian Grey" had not then been much noticed. But he had "come out," and was destined to "stay out" in the sense that he was soon to be talked of again more than he ever had been, and in a more reputable manner. His art criticisms in the London papers, his essays on the drama and his poems began to attract more and more attention, and serve to revive interest in "Dorian Grey." He was criticised extensively, and although the morality of much that he wrote was questioned or condemned, the literary ability of his work was generally conceded. He adopted Whistler's plan of quarreling with his critics, and of "making phrases."

Then, about three years ago, his play, "Lady Windermere's Fan," was produced in London, and later here, and that at once made him one of the most talked about playwrights living. There was not much seriously objectionable in the sentiments expressed in this play; not to theatre-goers who had become accustomed to "Divorcon," and its kind, and this did not seem to satisfy Mr. Wilde, He wrote "Salome," wrote it in French and arranged with Sarah Bernhardt to produce it in London, but the Lord Chamberlain refused to authorize its production, or, to put it the familiar way, prohibited it, and Wilde threatened to go to France to live—which the Marquis of Queensberry expressed a longing for him to do—but he did not. He said of this prohibition and of Sarah Bernhardt's rehearsals:

"Every rehearsal has been a source of intense pleasure to me. To hear my own vwords spoken by the most beautiful voice in the world has been the greatest artistic joy that it is possible to experience. So that, you see, as far as I am concerned, I care very little about the refusal of the Lord Chamberlain to allow my plays to be produced. What I do care about is this, that the censorship apparently reggards the stage as the lowest of all the arts, and looks on acting as a vulgar thing. The painter is allowed to take his subjects where he chooses. He can go to the great Hebrew and Hebrew-Greek literature of the Bible, and can paint Salome dancing, or Christ on the cross, or the Virgin with her child. Nobody interferes with the painter. Nobody says: 'Painting is such a vulgar art that you must not paint sacred things.' The sculptor is equally free. He can carve St. John the Baptist in his camel hair, and fashion the Madonna or Christ in bronze or in marble, as he wills. Yet nobody says to him: 'Sculpture is such a vulgar art that you must not carve sacred things.' And the writer—the poet—he also is quite free. I can write about any subject I choose. For me there is no censorship. I can take any incident I like out of sacred literature and treat it as I choose, and there is no one to say to the poet: 'Poetry is such a vulgar art that you must not use it in treating sacred subjects.' But there is a censorship over the stage and acting, and the basis of that censorship is that, while vulgar subjects may be put on the stage and acted, while everything that is mean and low and shameful in life can be portrayed by actors, no actor is to be permitted to present, under artistic conditions, the great and ennobling subjects taken from the Bible. The insult in the suppression of 'Salome' is an insult to the stage as a form of art, and not to me."

A year and a half ago Mr. Wilde managed to contrive and have ventilated in the Pall Mall Budget a quarrel with T. P. O'Connor, in which he expressed his opinion of the "ordinary journalist" in a manner intended to increase the scope of the quarrel, but it did not. This is his first letter in the series published in the Budget:

"Sir: Will you allow me to draw your attention to a very interesting example of the ethics of modern journalism, a quality of which we have all heard so much and seen so little?"About a month ago Mr. T. P. O'Connor published in the Weekly Sun some doggerel verses entitled 'The Shamrock,' and had the amusing impertinence to append my name to them as their author. As for some years past all kinds of scurrilous personal attacks had been made on me in Mr. O'Connor's newspapers, I determined to take no notice at all of the incident."Enraged, however, by my courteous silence, Mr. O'Connor returns to the charge this week. He now solemnly accuses me of plagiarizing the poem he had the vulgarity to attribute to me."This seems to me to pass beyond even those bounds of coarse humor and coarser malice that are, by the contempt of all, conceded to the ordinary journalist, and it is really very distressing to find so low a standard of ethics in a Sunday newspaper. I remain, sir, your obedient servant,"OSCAR WILDE."

The reply to this was signed, "The Assistant Editor," which gave Mr. Wilde an opportunity to say this:

"Sir: The assistant editor of the Weekly Sun, on whom seems to devolve the arduous duty of writing Mr. T. P. O'Connor's apologies for him, does not, I observe with regret, place that gentleman's conduct in any more attractive or more honorable light by the attempted explanation that appears in the letter published in your issue of today. For the future it would be much better if Mr. O'Connor would always write his own apologies. That he can do so exceedingly well no one is more ready to admit than myself. I happen to possess one from him."

In spite of the harsh things which have been written lately about the moral quality of his later literary work, a recent London o critic wrote of him:

"Mr. Oscar Wilde has a very wholesome influence upon contemporary thought, though there are people who think otherwise. It is not that he is original, or even absurd. He is never entirely either. But he sticks his pen into the somewhat torpid consciousness of the average Englishman, and digs up the clods of truth which have caked and hardened therein. He turns upside down the proverbial wisdom which most of us regard as eternal verity, and shows us that it looks as well one way as the other."

"Oscar Wilde dropped all his eccentricities of dress when he left America, which he visited fifteen years ago. He also dropped the O'Flaherty from his name. The Oscar Wilde who returned to England was the conventional nineteenth century gentleman, quiet in dress and reserved in manner.

"The very first place in any history of the Wilde family, however, should be given to Oscar's mother. Half the good things Oscar Wilde says were first said by his mother. She was a Miss Elgie. She is a wonderful old woman, now in the seventies, but as bright and alert as she was thirty years ago. As a girl she achieved a great reputation as a poet, writing under the name of 'Speranza' for Ireland's liberty. Dr. Wilde, her husband, was knighted for services he had rendered to his country as an oculist. He possessed wonderful skill in this direction. It was owing to the success of an operation performed by him upon King Oscar of Sweden that that monarch acted as godfather to the little Oscar Wilde.

The Wilde Home in Dublin.

"The Wilde home during Oscar's childhood was in Merrion Square, Dublin. It's hospitality was famous. Oscar Wilde's wife is an Irish woman, and was a Miss Constance Lloyd. She intherited a large sum of money on the death of her father, who had great shipping interests.

Wilde's Literary Work.

Swayed in Turn by Christian and Pagan Influences, but Still a True Poet.

Oscar Wilde comes of parentage distinguished alike in social, and in intellectual life. His father was Sir William Wilde, the late eminent surgeon, who for many years was surgeon oculist to Queen Victoria, who was the founder and lifelong chief of staff of St. Mark's Ophtalmic and Aural Hospital of Dublin, who had a European reputation in his profession, who wielded an immense personal influence in Ireland through his magnetic qualities and wide information, and who was known to antiquaries and historians by his passionate devotion to the study of archaeology.

Twice he was elected president of the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin. His published works, "The Shores of Lough Corrib and Lough Mask," are everywhere recognized as scholarly, contributions to the early history of Ireland. He was knighted in 1853 in recognition both of his professional skill and of his arduous and successful labors in producing the first elaborate and reliable census of his native land.

Oscar Wilde's mother, who is still alive, at the age of 77, is perhaps the most famous woman poet of Ireland. Her patriotic poems and lyrics, produced under the pseudonym of "Speranza," endeared her to the hearts of her countrymen. One especially, "The Famine in Ireland," is still remembered, and may be found in almost any anthology of poetry. It is a grim and masterly description of the desolation produced by the famine of 1849.

In Dublin she built up the literary salon which existed there. Her receptions were always crowded by literary and political celebrities, and especially by those who had the cause of young Ireland at heart.

Her Career in London.

More recently she removed to London, and still continued to cultivate the society of the most eminent men and women of the time. Her cozy drawing room, whose curtains are always closely drawn, is softly lighted with crimson silken shaded lamps. The hostess, tall and dignified, and richly dressed, moves among her guests with a dignified and gracious manner, conversing easily and intelligently on the leading topics of the day in a sympathetic voice that reveals her warm Irish nature.

Thus, the boy; who was born on Oct. 16, 1856, was brought up in an atmosphere of enthusiasm and agitation. He was constantly with his father and mother, always among grown persons, and before he was in his teens had heard every creed advocated and attacked at his father's dinner table. His early education was conducted at home, where he was given the finest of all educators—the best literature of the day. He traveled much, both in France and Germany, and imbibed a love for Heine and for Goethe.

Training at Oxford.

Before going to Oxford he spent a year in Dublin University, where he captured a scholarship and the gold medal for Greek. Then, in 1874, he matriculated at Magdalen College, Oxford, and in the four years he was there took two scholarships and won the guerdon most coveted by ambitious students, the Newdigate prize for poetry. His subject was "Ravenna."

It was at Oxford that he became a passionate disciple of Ruskin, who lectured there on Florentine art. Ruskin was not content with mere lecturing. Four days in every week he devoted himself to teaching the flower of British youth how to devote its strength to the practical art of hewing stones for the highways. Young Wilde was even then a Sybarite, careful of his comfort and fond of luxury. Yet, under the influence of the master, he would cheerfully rise at early dawn to earn the glory of filling Ruskin's own special wheelbarrow with stones broken by his own right arm.

His rooms were gorgeously decorated with treasures of art and virtu, from Burne Jones' pictures to Damascus tiles, and the famous blue china, which was always a part of his cult in his vacation.

He followed Rusklin to Italy. Wilde came back to England, in aesthetic feeling, at least, a Catholic.

It was then that he produced his first poems, many of which were published in Catholic periodicals. One of these, on "Rome Unvisited," attracted the attention of Cardinal Newman. A lecture by the other great Catholic, Cardinal Manning, on "Catholic Oxford," which Wilde attended at this period of transition, almost induced him to follow many of his friends into open adherence to Rome. But now a new influence stepped into his life.

Prof. J. P. Mahaffey, the Greek scholar, had been strongly attracted by the ardent young poet. He took Oscar to Greece. He inspired him with his own love for Hellenic life, literature and art.

Paganism triumphed over Christian Catholocism. Young Wilde returned to Oxford a confirmed classicist. Poetry was still the medium through which he expressed his new cult. In 1878 he took his degree. Then he went to live in London.

As a Poet.

Perhaps Oscar found it to his interest not to resent the stage caricatures. At the very height of the "Patience" fever came the announcement of Oscar Wilde's poems. Then it was seen that the young man was only pretending to be an idiot. His verses on "England;" his "Ave Imperatrix," though too Tennysonian, and his "Garden of Eros," though too Swinburnian; his neo-Catholic poems, gathered under the general head of "Rosa Mystica," had the ring.

But the most sincere and genuine of all was the introductory sonnet, full of sad, vain longing and regret. Here it is in entire. It casts a curious light upon a curious personality:

Helas!To drift with every passion till my soulIs a stringed lute, on which all winds can play.Is it for this that I have given awayMine ancient wisdom, and austere control?—Methinks my life is a twice written scrollScrawled over on some boyish holidayWith idle songs for pipe and virelayWhich do but mar the secret of the whole.Surely there was a time I might have trodThe sunlit heights, and from life's dissonanceStruck one clear chord to reach the ears of God:Is that time dead? Lo! with a little rodI did but touch the honey of romance—And must I lose a soul's inheritance?

He has fallen so deep that no hand can raise him without being besmirched with his own infamy. But in the gutter where he lies we can, without offence, do him such justice, at least, as he deservd. He was certainly a good son, patient, loving, devoted. He appeared to be a kind husband and a fond father, and his work had much in it that was useful. It is a pity that his hatred of conventionality and traditional shams had so much in it that was itself, a sham, and worse.

We live in times of change, alarm, surprise. Old traditions and old conventions are being assailed on all sides. Time alone will tell how much of the old will be left after the new upheaval has subsided. In the armies of light and leading sharpshooters, armed with the weapons of wit and sarcasm, they have their uses. But they must be sure of the purity of their ammunition, or they will be doubly damned. Their very colleagues must condemn them more fiercely even than their enemies.

In the fall of Oscar Wilde art and literature have innocently suffered. But better no art and no literature than the acceptance of Wilde.

LONDON, April 7 - A report that Oscar Wilde had committed suicide in the Bow st police station caused a widespread sensation today.

The report originated, it was found, in the fact that when Wilde was about to be transferred from the police station in a prison van to Holloway jail he was in a state of semicollapse, suffering from hysteria, and said to the prison attendants that he should commit suicide if he had a chance.

This put them on the alert.

Wilde was immediately subjected to a thorough search, and the police even removed his pearl breast pin and handkerchief, lest he might stab or strangle himself.

The prospect of conviction, with the consequent horrors of a convict's life, appaled Wilde. It is that aspect which seems to concern him exclusively, not the shame and degradation into which he is plunged.

He is a man to whom the luxuries of life were everything, whose sole thought was self-indulgence. To such a one the rigors and deprivations of prison are the very worst kind of punishment.

AS HUSBAND AND SON. Mrs Frank Leslie Tells of the Home Life of Oscar Wilde.

NEW YORK, April 7 - The Herald today says:

There is probably no one individual in this country more deeply grieved and shocked over the disclosures which have brought about the downfall of Oscar Wilde than Mrs Frank Leslie.

Mrs Leslie's marital difficulties with his brother never at anytime disturbed the cordial relations which existed between herself and Oscar Wilde. She saw him frequently during her yearly sojourns in London, and was always a welcome guest, both at his own home and that of his mother, Lady Wilde.

Mrs Leslie's acquaintanceship with Oscar Wilde dates from the time of his visit to this country 15 years ago, when he flashed upon us the brilliant eccentricity of his esthetic fad, then in the zenith of its extravagance.

The friendship then formed has continued ever since. Mrs Leslie since that time has been on terms of the closest intimacy with the Wilde family, so that no one is better entitled to speak authoritatively of the character and home life of the brilliant man whose career seems to be about ended. Mrs Leslie's remarks in this direction will be found both spicy and entertaining.

"This terrible thing that has come upon Mr Wilde," said Mrs Leslie yesterday, "is the greatest puzzle of my life. I cannot reconcile it with what I know of Oscar Wilde. Remember, my opinion is based upon what I've seen of him in his home, as husband, son and friend. He has always been a devoted son. Never a day passes but that he visits his delightful old mother, bearing with him some gift of flowers or fruit. He has said to me, the tears welling up in his eyes, ‘Ah, it will be the blackest day in my life when my mother is taken from me.' I was moved by his emotion, and said: ‘How you love her!' ‘Yes,' he replied, ‘she's the best mother that ever lived.'

"In the case of Wilde these revelations must necessarily damn him forever in English society, in which he had made both for himself and his family a proud position. Indeed, the Wildes went everywhere, and at their well-appointed home in Tite st one was always sure of meeting the very brightest persons in England.

"The very first place in any history of the Wilde family, however, should be given to Oscar's mother. Half the good things Oscar Wilde says were first said by his mother. She was a Miss Elgie, and comes of a fine old Irish family. She is a wonderful old woman, now in the sententies, but as bright and alert as she was 30 years ago. As a girl she achieved a great reputation as a poet, writing under the name of ‘Speranza’ for Ireland's liberty . The story goes that her spirited call to arms was attributed to an eminent public man, who was arrested on the charge.

"When she heard of it this slender girl arose in court and publicly acknowledged the authorship of the dangerous lines in question. She was always a heroine, brave, intrepid, lofty of soul. Dr Wilde, her husband, was knighted for services he had rendered to his country as an oculist. He possessed wonderful skill in this direction. It was owing to the success of an operation performed by him upon King Oscar of Sweden that the monarch condescended to act as godfather to the little Oscar Wilde.

"The Wilde home during Oscar's childhood was in Merrion sq, Dublin. It's hospitality was famous. Mrs Wilde entertained right royally. It was a common thing in that house for the table to be set with 40 covers. Everybody was welcome. There never was a board where so much wit scintillated as at Lady Wilde’s. I have never seen anyone with her grace in entertaining.

"Lady Wilde was always fond of dress, and is so to this day. Old as she is, and bedridden, she is still as dainty about her person as an aristocratic belle in her first season. Her home was and is a rendezvous for Americans. Her Saturday afternoons at her house in Chelsea were, until her illness, one of the marvels of the city.

"She had a passion for dim religious light. The curtains were always drawn and the gas jets shaded with red globes . The effect was most peculiar, and so dark were her rooms that the guests frequently fell over one another in moving about. Lady Wilde to this day has the heart of a young girl. She reads every new book, and is as conversant with what is going on in this country as I am.

"Now, I do not place so much stress

Continued on the Fifth Page.

LODGED IN JAIL. Continued from the First Page.

on that letter to Lord Alfred Douglas. It contains simply the jargon of that set of which Wilde is the acknowledged leader. You will find the same thing in ‘The Green Carnation.' In the book Esmee is Oscar Wilde, and Lord Reggie is Lord Alfred Douglas. The marquis of Queensberry is easily recognizable, and so is Mme Gabrielli, another famous figure in London society. This book was really the last straw to the marquis of Queensberry. He couldn't stand its subtle allusion.

"I want to tell you about Oscar Wilde's wife. She is an Irish woman, and was Miss Constance Lloyd. She inherited a large sum of money on the death of her father, who had great shipping interests. She is the prettiest, daintiest, most graceful woman you ever saw, and after 15 years of married life she still adores her husband. While his dress is now strictly conventional, she continues to affect the esthetic in all her costumes.

"Why, she's the purest, simplest thing. She wouldn't even tell a society fib. She's as cold as marble, but through the ice you can see the warm glitter of heartfelt admiration for her husband. Her reception days are Wednesdays, and a marvelous feature of them is the invariable presence of her husband. He always stays at home on her reception days, a remarkable thing, I think, after 15 years of wedded life. It is beautiful to observe how she is always looking up to him, always appealing for his approval of everything she says.

"Their home in Tite st, Chelsea, is a marvel of well ordered appointment and elegant taste. The drawing room is decorated in white and gold, but the furniture reproduces in its models and combinations the ‘greenery-yellery’ effect. Some of the finest watercolors I ever saw adorn the walls. And then the persons you meet there are the wittiest and brainiest in London. There you will see Swinburne, ever an intimate and admirer of Oscar Wilde, and Whistler, who got off that famous joke which set the whole literary world laughing and wagging its head. It happened at a dinner party, Whistler had said something remarkably clever and Wilde remarked, ‘I wish to heavens, Whistler, I'd said that myself.' To which the artist responded, ‘You will, Oscar; you will in time.'

"When I think of this delightful home, of the lovely woman who presides over it, of the mother whose sole stay and support that son is, and of the two lovely children, the fruit of a union of hearts, I find it hard to believe that Oscar Wilde is the creature men say he is.

"Oscar Wilde's boys are Vivian and Clarence, 13 and 11 years old respectively. They are splendid fellows, with the mop of Wilde hair growing low over their foreheads. This Wilde hair is a marvel. It keeps the members of this remarkable family in the realm of perpetual youth. Even at her advanced age it covers, when released, the shoulders of Lady Wilde like a thick veil.

"But let me tell you about these boys. They have been most carefully nurtured. Oscar's fad has been that they should never go to school until they were thoroughly robust physically. The consequence is that their education has been directed so far exclusively by the father and mother. Mr Wilde would never have a tutor in his house, or indeed, for that matter, a male servant of any description. It is a noticeable fact that at all his great dinners Mr Wilde’s guests are always served by women waiters.

"These boys are such perfect gentlemen. Their home life is so well ordered. I remember on one occasion asking Vivian whether he had been to see a certain one of his father’s plays. His reply was so astounding that I have never forgotten it. ‘No,' he said, ‘there are certain epigrams in that play which mama doesn't think it fit for me to hear.' Imagine that baby discussing epigrams!

"Mr Wilde never discussed morals with me except so far as his boys were concerned. He spoke of them with such pride and looked on them so lovingly. He emphasized again and again the wish that they should be strong physically. He deprecated their associations with other children, and was especially happy in the thought that the mother had taught them everything. And they are so fond of him, so proud of him, so happy in his society. I vow I could shed bitter tears as I think of all these things.

"Whatever occured between his brother and myself never affected our friendship. I had been his first friend in America, and then when he moved into Tite st I was at his house-warming. I ever found him a courteous, splendid gentleman.

"So far as affairs of gallantry with women are concerned, the breath of scandal has never touched him. He was always strictly exact about money matters. He was never in his life under the influence of liquor. He drinks like a gentleman. His wife is just as free from all scandal.

"Undoubtedly they'll make a severe example of him. In England, these things have been going on too long not to react most fearfully upon the first man to be definitely found out. How odd it must be for him to be in jail!

"But he's plucky - he's no coward. I remember when a certain editor said of him in print that he was so conceited that he ought to be kicked Mr Wilde rose early the next morning, went down to the editor’s office and told him that he would break his head then and there unless he printed a retraction. It is needless to say that the retraction was duly published. You see, Mr Wilde is so clever that he has made as many enemies as friends.

"I want to say that the reports in circulation to the effect that Mr Wilde is slovenly in his dress are utterly untrue. Without being ultra-fashionable in his attire, he is one of the best dressed men in London. His linen is always immaculate. He now wears his hair cropped close, and in all respects might pass anywhere as a well groomed, sensible English gentleman.

"He is a hard worker, too. Indeed, it is hard for me to conceive that he could be the low debauchee he is pictured, without having thrown some of the contamination upon his home. And yet the fact is that his home is one of the most beautiful and well ordered in England. He always seemed to me to have the highest moral tone. Time and time again I have heard him reprobate evil in terms of withering scorn. Mr Wilde is in the enjoyment of a large income derived principally from royalties upon his plays."