“’This is love:  this is what he meant—­love.’...

“I was trembling all over.  For a long while I sat, unable to think, all shaken with wonder and remorse.”

CHAPTER III

Oscar Wilde did well at school, but he did still better at college, where the competition was more severe.  He entered Trinity on October 19th, 1871, just three days after his seventeenth birthday.  Sir Edward Sullivan writes me that when Oscar matriculated at Trinity he was already “a thoroughly good classical scholar of a brilliant type,” and he goes on to give an invaluable snap-shot of him at this time; a likeness, in fact, the chief features of which grew more and more characteristic as the years went on.

“He had rooms in College at the north side of one of the older squares, known as Botany Bay.  These rooms were exceedingly grimy and ill-kept.  He never entertained there.  On the rare occasions when visitors were admitted, an unfinished landscape in oils was always on the easel, in a prominent place in his sitting room.  He would invariably refer to it, telling one in his humorously unconvincing way that ‘he had just put in the butterfly.’  Those of us who had seen his work in the drawing class presided over by ‘Bully’ Wakeman at Portora were not likely to be deceived in the matter....

“His college life was mainly one of study; in addition to working for his classical examinations, he devoured with voracity all the best English writers.

“He was an intense admirer of Swinburne and constantly reading his poems; John Addington Symond’s works too, on the Greek authors, were perpetually in his hands.  He never entertained any pronounced views on social, religious or political questions while in College; he seemed to be altogether devoted to literary matters.

“He mixed freely at the same time in Dublin society functions of all kinds, and was always a very vivacious and welcome guest at any house he cared to visit.  All through his Dublin University days he was one of the purest minded men that could be met with.

“He was not a card player, but would on occasions join in a game of limited loo at some man’s rooms.  He was also an extremely moderate drinker.  He became a member of the junior debating society, the Philosophical, but hardly ever took any part in their discussions.

[Illustration:  Dr. Sir William Wilde]

“He read for the Berkeley medal (which he afterwards gained) with an excellent, but at the same time broken-down, classical scholar, John Townsend Mills, and, besides instruction, he contrived to get a good deal of amusement out of his readings with his quaint teacher.  He told me for instance that on one occasion he expressed his sympathy for Mills on seeing him come into his rooms wearing a tall hat completely covered in crape.  Mills, however, replied, with a smile, that no one was dead—­it was only the evil condition of his hat that had made him assume so mournful a disguise.  I have often thought that the incident was still fresh in Oscar Wilde’s mind when he introduced John Worthing in ‘The Importance of Being Earnest,’ in mourning for his fictitious brother....