Walter Horatio Pater, an English essayist and critic, lived mainly in Oxford, where he read classics at Queens College and later became a fellow of Brasenose. He was a central figure of and inspiration for English fin de siècle art and art criticism and a profound influence on Oscar Wilde. He is of importance in philosophical aesthetics for his association with and championing of the l'art pour l'art doctrine of his age and for his insistence on "aesthetic criticism" of literature and the fine arts, stressing the subjective sensitivity of the critic and his power to paint evocative pictures of moments of intense experience in finely wrought, decorative prose. He is important in general philosophical history for his aphoristic but consistent statements that a relativist position was the only appropriate position for the modern temperament.

In the course of his career...