Quebec Morning Chronicle - Friday, April 26, 1895

Vice, nor art.

Time was ripe to chastise such a literary debauchee as Oscar Wilde. The conservation of public morals necessitated the suppression of the cult he had originated, and of which he was the high priest — a cult that was unhealthy, unnatural, and vile. Under Wilde's teachings, even more than by his individual example, the very foundations of society were attacked. In the name of art he outraged humanity, unsexed manhood, and desecrated morality. Following his lead and sustained by his diabolical doctrines, the youth of two continent were becoming tainted, and in many instances absolutely debauched. Virility was giving place to femininity in man, truth was making way for a painted lie, and virtue was dying from the contact of a horrible vice that he himself had gilded into a form attractive to the young and foolish.

"He had prated of his art, but it was an art that ultimately leads its devotees to renounce all that is manly and noble and chivalrous. It was an art that made women of men; that led boys to lisp in speech, to mince in walk, to pour tea as girls do, to paint their faces and to make love to one another. It was the art that ruined Rome, and that has marked the most vicious periods in all the history of humanity. It was not art at all, but foul, repulsive, unspeakable vice."

"It is to the credit of London’s manhood that she has scotched this social serpent. It will be a blessing to the world, and particularly to England and America, when the putrid cancer of Oscar Wildedism shall have been out entirely from society and literature, Belshazzar’s feast was a light offense against God and man compared to the devilishly insidious teachings of this literary libertine, who has been brought at last to answer not only for the evil of his doctrines but of his practices. London has read aright the handwriting on the wall, and it is well for the world that she has." — The Recorder, New York.