Wilde had said two poems of Lord Alfred Douglas were “beautiful.”  The prosecution declared that these poems were in essence a defence of the vilest immorality, but is it not possible for the most passionate poem, even the most vicious, to be “beautiful”?  Nothing was ever written more passionate than one of the poems of Sappho.  Yet a fragment has been selected out and preserved by the admiration of a hundred generations of men.  The prosecution was in the position all the time of one who declared that a man who praised a nude picture must necessarily be immoral.  Such a contention would be inconceivable in any other civilised country.  Even the Judge was on much the same intellectual level.  It would not be fair, he admitted, to condemn a poet or dramatic writer by his works and he went on: 

“It is unfortunately true that while some of our greatest writers have passed long years in writing nothing but the most wholesome literature—­literature of the highest genius, and which anybody can read, such as the literature of Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens; it is also true that there were other great writers, more especially in the eighteenth century, perfectly noble-minded men themselves, who somehow or other have permitted themselves to pen volumes which it is painful for persons of ordinary modesty and decency to read.”

It would have been more honest and more liberal to have brushed away the nonsensical indictment in a sentence.  Would the Treasury have put Shakespeare on trial for “Hamlet” or “Lear,” or would they have condemned the writer of “The Song of Solomon” for immorality, or sent St. Paul to prison for his “Epistle to the Corinthians”?

Middle-class prejudice and hypocritic canting twaddle from Judge and advocate dragged their weary length along for days and days.  On Wednesday Sir Edward Clarke made his speech for the defence.  He pointed out the unfairness of the charges of conspiracy which had tardily been withdrawn.  He went on to say that the most remarkable characteristic of the case was the fact that it had been the occasion for conduct on the part of certain sections of the press which was disgraceful, and which imperilled the administration of justice, and was in the highest degree injurious to the client for whom he was pleading.  Nothing, he concluded, could be more unfair than the way Mr. Wilde had been criticised in the press for weeks and weeks.  But no judge interfered on his behalf.

Sir Edward Clarke evidently thought that to prove unfairness would not even influence the minds of the London jury.  He was content to repudiate the attempt to judge Mr. Wilde by his books or by an article which he had condemned, or by poems which he had not written.  He laid stress on the fact that Mr. Wilde had himself brought the charge against Lord Queensberry which had provoked the whole investigation:  “on March 30th, Mr. Wilde,” he said, “knew the catalogue of accusations”; and he asked:  did the jury believe that, if he had been guilty, he would have stayed in England and brought about the first trial?  Insane would hardly be the word for such conduct, if Mr. Wilde really had been guilty.  Moreover, before even hearing the specific accusations, Mr. Wilde had gone into the witness box to deny them.