natural admiration which a younger man feels for a brilliant senior formed the obvious bond between them.  But no sooner did Oscar republish “Dorian Gray” than ill-informed and worse-minded persons went about saying that the eponymous hero of the book was John Gray, though “Dorian Gray” was written before Oscar had met or heard of John Gray.  One cannot help admitting that this was partly Oscar’s own fault.  In talk he often alluded laughingly to John Gray as his hero, “Dorian.”  It is just an instance of the challenging contempt which he began to use about this time in answer to the inventions of hatred.

Late in this year, 1891, he published four stories completely void of offence, calling the collection “A House of Pomegranates.”  He dedicated each of the tales to a lady of distinction and the book made many friends; but it was handled contemptuously in the press and had no sale.

By this time people expected a certain sort of book from Oscar Wilde and wanted nothing else.  They hadn’t to wait long.  Early in 1892 we heard that Oscar had written a drama in French called Salome, and at once it was put about that Sarah Bernhardt was going to produce it in London.  Then came dramatic surprise on surprise:  while it was being rehearsed, the Lord Chamberlain refused to license it on the ground that it introduced Biblical characters.  Oscar protested in a brilliant interview against the action of the Censor as “odious and ridiculous.”  He pointed out that all the greatest artists—­painters and sculptors, musicians and writers—­had taken many of their best subjects from the Bible, and wanted to know why the dramatist should be prevented from treating the great soul-tragedies most proper to his art.  When informed that the interdict was to stand, he declared in a pet that he would settle in France and take out letters of naturalisation: 

“I am not English.  I am Irish—­which is quite another thing.”  Of course the press made all the fun it could of his show of temper.

Mr. Robert Ross considers “Salome” “the most powerful and perfect of all Oscar’s dramas.”  I find it almost impossible to explain, much less justify, its astonishing popularity.  When it appeared, the press, both in France and in England, was critical and contemptuous; but by this time Oscar had so captured the public that he could afford to disdain critics and calumny.  The play was praised by his admirers as if it had been a masterpiece, and London discussed it the more because it was in French and not clapper-clawed by the vulgar.

The indescribable cold lewdness and cruelty of “Salome” quickened the prejudice and strengthened the dislike of the ordinary English reader for its author.  And when the drama was translated into English and published with the drawings of Aubrey Beardsley, it was disparaged and condemned by all the leaders of literary opinion.  The colossal popularity of the play, which Mr. Robert Ross proves so triumphantly, came from Germany and Russia and is to be attributed in part to the contempt educated Germans and Russians feel for the hypocritical vagaries of English prudery.  The illustrations of Aubrey Beardsley, too, it must be admitted, were an additional offence to the ordinary English reader, for they intensified the peculiar atmosphere of the drama.