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. "Ludicrous" because it betrays such
complete ignorance of life all given over to men industrious with muck-rakes:
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