thirst. He learns deep lessons almost unconsciously; to conquer his
desires and make light of pain and discomfort. He needs no Aristotle
to teach him the value of habits; he is soon forced to use them as
defences against his pet weaknesses; above all he finds that
self-denial has its reward in perfect health; that the thistle pain,
too, has its flower. It is a truism that 'Varsity athletes generally
succeed in life, Spartan discipline proving itself incomparably
superior to Greek accidence.
Oscar Wilde knew nothing of this discipline. He had never trained his
body to endure or his will to steadfastness. He was the perfect flower
of academic study and leisure. At Magdalen he had been taught
luxurious living, the delight of gratifying expensive tastes; he had
been brought up and enervated so to speak in Capua. His vanity had
been full-fed with cloistered triumphs; he was at once
pleasure-loving, vainly self-confident and weak; he had been
encouraged for years to give way to his emotions and to pamper his
sensations, and as the Cap-and-Bells of Folly to cherish a fantastic
code of honour even in mortal combat, while despising the religion
which might have given him some hold on the respect of his
compatriots. What chance had this cultured honour-loving Sybarite in
the deadly grapple of modern life where the first quality is will
power, the only knowledge needed a knowledge of the value of money. I
must not be understood here as in any degree disparaging Oscar. I can
surely state that a flower is weaker than a weed without exalting the
weed or depreciating the flower.
The first part of life's voyage was over for Oscar Wilde; let us try
to see him as he saw himself at this time and let us also determine
his true relations to the world. Fortunately he has given us his own
view of himself with some care.
In Foster's _Alumni Oxonienses_, Oscar Wilde described himself on
leaving Oxford as a "Professor of AEsthetics, and a Critic of Art"--an
announcement to me at once infinitely ludicrous and pathetic.
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