The Evening Star - Saturday, June 1, 1895

BY THE WAY.

I might easily take it for granted that everyone has read the terrible story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. But since the day I discovered a very clever, well-educated man of fifty who had never read 'King Lear' (though he was hugely delighted with the first taste of it), I never do take anything of the kind for granted. Pray, therefore, be patient if I say that Stevenson's terrible book—for really that is the only adjective one can apply to it—illustrates the universally-known fact that every man has in him two natures, a good and a bad—the one a bundle of the higher and the other of the lower elements. The ordinary man, as we know him, represents in face and figure, in speech, action, and demeanor the intimate and inseparable blend of the two, the higher, happily for us (though of course it may be low enough at its best) always predominating/ Dr Jekyll, the scientific professor, the rich doctor, the man of good presence, good conduct, and good standing in society represents the blend. Here let him speak for himself:—

Enough then that I not only recognise my natural body for the mere aura and effulgence of certain of the powers that made up my spirit, but managed to compound a drug by which these powers should be dethroned from their supremacy, and a second form and countenance substituted, none the less natural to me because they wore the expression, and bore the stamp, of lower elements of my soul.

These lower elements separated and embodied by the drug took the form (Dr Jekyll vanishing for the time) of Mr Hyde, a loathsome creature from whom all men instinctively shrank. What a merciful thing to be sure that there is no such drug—in actuality, that is. Morally there is one, and awful indeed is the fate of those who have to quaff the potion. That is what Oscar Wilde had to do during the recent case. Before it he was Oscar Wilde, far from a lofty specimen of humanity, it is true, but still to the outward eye the usual blend of good and evil. When the case was over and the potion was swallowed he was led away on the chain a four-footed thing to his prison den. What a doom! The two years' sentence is nothing. The mortal punishment is the recognition by one's self and the world of a deadly transformation. Even the fate of Ulysses's men under the wand of Circe was not so bad:—

Instant her circling wand the goddess waves,

To hogs transforms them, and the stye receives.

No more was seen the human form divine,

Head, face, and members bristle into swine.