The Age - Wednesday, May 29, 1895

OUR LONDON LETTER.
(FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT.)
LONDON, 26TH APRIL.

Mr. Robert Buchanan has written some singularly ill-timed letters to the newspaper in which he virtually sets up a theory that an artist and a man of letters is not responsible to the same laws as those which regulate the lives and conduct of meaner people; and that because Oscar Wilde has written some tolerable novels and some clever plays, therefore he should not be punished for acts which in other persons would be in the highest degree criminal. "But I will go a little further," says the dramatist and poet, "just in so far as a man has been respected by us, has amused us, has afforded us harmless pleasures, should receive delicate consideration. Treatment which would not in the least trouble Mr. Sikes may break the heart of a gentleman and scholar like Oscar Wilde, and if we who follow his calling do not speak the needful word in his behalf, who is to do so? Whatever he is, whatever he may be assumed to be, he is a man of letters, a brother artist, and no criminal prosecution whatever will be able to erase his name from the records of English literature." I do not think that English literature or its professors has much cause to thank Mr. Buchanan for his well meant but most injudicious interference.