may seek to soften its occasional injustices and mitigate its intolerable
harshness: but that is all the freedom we mortals enjoy, all the breathing-space
allotted to us.
In this book the reader will find the figure of the Prometheus-artist clamped,
so to speak, with bands of steel to the huge granitic cliff of English
puritanism. No account was taken of his manifold virtues and graces: no credit
given him for his extraordinary achievements: he was hounded out of life because
his sins were not the sins of the English middle-class. The culprit was in much
nobler and better than his judges.
Here are all the elements of pity and sorrow and fear that are required in
great tragedy.
The artist who finds in Oscar Wilde a great and provocative subject for his
art needs no argument to justify his choice. If the picture is a great and
living portrait, the moralist will be satisfied: the dark shadows must all be
there, as well as the high lights, and the effect must be to increase our
tolerance and intensify our pity.
If on the other hand the portrait is ill-drawn or ill-painted, all the reasoning
in the world and the praise of all the sycophants will not save the picture
from contempt and the artist from censure.
There is one measure by which intention as apart from accomplishment can be
judged, and one only: "If you think the book well done," says Pascal,
"and on re-reading find it strong; be assured that the man who wrote it,
wrote it on his knees." No book could have been written more reverently
than this book of mine.
Nice, 1910.
Frank Harris.
CHAPTER I--OSCAR'S FATHER AND MOTHER ON TRIAL
On the 12th of December, 1864, Dublin society was abuzz with excitement. A
tidbit of scandal which had long been rolled on the tongue in semi-privacy was
to be discussed in open court, and all women and a good many men were agog with
curiosity and expectation.
The story itself was highly spiced and all the actors in it well known.
A famous doctor and oculist, recently knighted for his achievements, was the
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