Next morning I got a letter from him telling me that he had read over my corrections and thought that the aphorisms I had rejected were the best, but he hoped I’d publish them as he had written them.

Naturally I replied that the final judgment must rest with him and I published them at once.

The delight I felt in his undoubted genius and success was not shared by others.  Friends took occasion to tell me that I should not go about with Oscar Wilde.

“Why not?” I asked.

“He has a bad name,” was the reply.  “Strange things are said about him.  He came down from Oxford with a vile reputation.  You have only got to look at the man.”

“Whatever the disease may be,” I replied, “it’s not catching—­unfortunately.”

The pleasure men take in denigration of the gifted is one of the puzzles of life to those who are not envious.

Men of letters, even people who ought to have known better, were slow to admit his extraordinary talent; he had risen so quickly, had been puffed into such prominence that they felt inclined to deny him even the gifts which he undoubtedly possessed.  I was surprised once to find a friend of mine taking this attitude:  Francis Adams, the poet and writer, chaffed me one day about my liking for Oscar.

“What on earth can you see in him to admire?” he asked.  “He is not a great writer, he is not even a good writer; his books have no genius in them; his poetry is tenth rate, and his prose is not much better.  His talk even is fictitious and extravagant.”

I could only laugh at him and advise him to read “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”

This book, however, gave Oscar’s puritanic enemies a better weapon against him than even “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.”  The subject, they declared, was the same as that of “Mr. W.H.,” and the treatment was simply loathsome.  More than one middle-class paper, such as To-Day in the hands of Mr. Jerome K. Jerome, condemned the book as “corrupt,” and advised its suppression.  Freedom of speech in England is more feared than licence of action:  a speck on the outside of the platter disgusts your puritan, and the inside is never peeped at, much less discussed.

Walter Pater praised “Dorian Gray” in the Bookman; but thereby only did himself damage without helping his friend.  Oscar meanwhile went about boldly, meeting criticism now with smiling contempt.

One incident from this time will show how unfairly he was being judged and how imprudent he was to front defamation with defiance.

One day I met a handsome youth in his company named John Gray, and I could not wonder that Oscar found him interesting, for Gray had not only great personal distinction, but charming manners and a marked poetic gift, a much greater gift than Oscar possessed.  He had besides an eager, curious mind, and of course found extraordinary stimulus in Oscar’s talk.  It seemed to me that intellectual sympathy and the