Oscar’s interest in the theme was different; he put himself frankly in the place of his model, and appeared to enjoy the jarring antinomy which resulted.  One or two of his stories were surprising in ironical suggestion; surprising too because they showed his convinced paganism.  Here is one which reveals his exact position: 

“When Joseph of Arimathea came down in the evening from Mount Calvary where Jesus had died he saw on a white stone a young man seated weeping.  And Joseph went near him and said, ’I understand how great thy grief must be, for certainly that Man was a just Man.’  But the young man made answer, ’Oh, it is not for that I am weeping.  I am weeping because I too have wrought miracles.  I also have given sight to the blind, I have healed the palsied and I have raised the dead; I too have caused the barren fig tree to wither away and I have turned water into wine ... and yet they have not crucified me.’”

At the time this apologue amused me; in the light of later events it assumed a tragic significance.  Oscar Wilde ought to have known that in this world every real superiority is pursued with hatred, and every worker of miracles is sure to be persecuted.  But he had no inkling that the Gospel story is symbolic—­the life-story of genius for all time, eternally true.  He never looked outside himself, and as the fruits of success were now sweet in his mouth, a pursuing Fate seemed to him the most mythical of myths.  His child-like self-confidence was pathetic.  The laws that govern human affairs had little interest for the man who was always a law unto himself.  Yet by some extraordinary prescience, some inexplicable presentiment, the approaching catastrophe cast its shadow over his mind and he felt vaguely that the life-journey of genius would be incomplete and farcical without the final tragedy:  whoever lives for the highest must be crucified.

It seems memorable to me that in this brief summer of his life, Oscar Wilde should have concerned himself especially with the life-story of the Man of Sorrows who had sounded all the depths of suffering.  Just when he himself was about to enter the Dark Valley, Jesus was often in his thoughts and he always spoke of Him with admiration.  But after all how could he help it?  Even Dekker saw as far as that: 

          “The best of men
    That e’er wore earth about Him.”

This was the deeper strain in Oscar Wilde’s nature though he was always disinclined to show it.  Habitually he lived in humorous talk, in the epithets and epigrams he struck out in the desire to please and astonish his hearers.

One evening I learned almost by chance that he was about to try a new experiment and break into a new field.

He took up the word “lose” at the table, I remember.

“We lose our chances,” he said, laughing, “we lose our figures, we even lose our characters; but we must never lose our temper.  That is our duty to our neighbour, Frank; but sometimes we mislay it, don’t we?”