Oscar Wilde’s work was over, his gift to the world completed years before.  Even the friends who loved him and delighted in the charm of his talk, in his light-hearted gaiety and humour, would scarcely have kept him longer in the pillory, exposed to the loathing and contempt of this all-hating world.

The good he did lives after him, and is immortal, the evil is buried in his grave.  Who would deny to-day that he was a quickening and liberating influence?  If his life was given overmuch to self-indulgence, it must be remembered that his writings and conversation were singularly kindly, singularly amiable, singularly pure.  No harsh or coarse or bitter word ever passed those eloquent laughing lips.  If he served beauty in her myriad forms, he only showed in his works the beauty that was amiable and of good report.  If only half-a-dozen men mourned for him, their sorrow was unaffected and intense, and perhaps the greatest of men have not found in their lifetime even half-a-dozen devoted admirers and lovers.  It is well with our friend, we say:  at any rate, he was not forced to drink the bitter lees of a suffering and dishonourable old age:  Death was merciful to him.

My task is finished.  I don’t think anyone will doubt that I have done it in a reverent spirit, telling the truth as I see it, from the beginning to the end, and hiding or omitting as little as might be of what ought to be told.  Yet when I come to the parting I am painfully conscious that I have not done Oscar Wilde justice; that some fault or other in me has led me to dwell too much on his faults and failings and grudged praise to his soul-subduing charm and the incomparable sweetness and gaiety of his nature.

Let me now make amends.  When to the sessions of sad memory I summon up the spirits of those whom I have met in the world and loved, men famous and men of unfulfilled renown, I miss no one so much as I miss Oscar Wilde.  I would rather spend an evening with him than with Renan or Carlyle, or Verlaine or Dick Burton or Davidson.  I would rather have him back now than almost anyone I have ever met.  I have known more heroic souls and some deeper souls; souls much more keenly alive to ideas of duty and generosity; but I have known no more charming, no more quickening, no more delightful spirit.

This may be my shortcoming; it may be that I prize humour and good-humour and eloquent or poetic speech, the artist qualities, more than goodness or loyalty or manliness, and so over-estimate things amiable.  But the lovable and joyous things are to me the priceless things, and the most charming man I have ever met was assuredly Oscar Wilde.  I do not believe that in all the realms of death there is a more fascinating or delightful companion.