Belfast News-Letter - Monday, May 27, 1895

Mr. Oscar Wilde has been sentenced to two years' hard labour in Pentonville by one of the most kind-hearted judges on the bench—Mr. Justice Wills—who is not given to erring on the side of severity. This is the maximum penalty allowed by the law for offences of the kind of which Wilde and Taylor were yesterday found guilty. As a dramatist Wilde has proved very successful, though I have never admired the audacity of his treatment of modern society. He seems to have fallen a victim to his own unbounded imagination, accentuated probably by drinking too deeply at the tainted fount of ancient Greek literature. The utmost sympathy is felt for his wife and his two boys, now advancing to manhood, and there is a general feeling that something should be done for them to lighten the great load of sorrow, which, through no fault of their own, is a great deal more than they can bear.