Let me say that it was Wilde himself who misunderstood him before the large world was pleased to misunderstand him; he who found joy in his artistic self-deception, that is in the creation of a false self that would pass as the real self, had at last to cry over fate when from the realization of his being a social outcast he exclaimed; “If after I am free a friend of mine gave a feast and did not invite me to it, I should not mind a bit I can be perfectly happy by myself. With freedom, flowers, books and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy?” Indeed the time when he found that the real self is alone worthy and kind came to him too late.
I always thought that he was a moralist (who among the English authors, I should like to know, is not a moralist?), even a great moralist, from the reason that, like a pretty woman who always conceals her thoughts most beloved, he tried, often even with literary desperation, to hide the fact of his being a moralist; and he was very brilliant and quite distinguished par-
