Oscar Wilde, Essays and Lectures (1908)

Bibliographical note: Essays and Lectures, ed. Robert Ross (Methuen 1908; fifth edn. 1913); is available in full at Gutenberg Project - online; also at Literature Page - online.

Contents

Preface Notes
Preface [by Rober Ross]

With the exception of the Poems in Prose this volume does not contain anything which the author ever contemplated reprinting. The Rise of Historical Criticism is interesting to admirers of his work, however, because it shows the development of his style and the wide intellectual range distinguishing the least borné of all the late Victorian writers, with the possible exception of Ruskin. It belongs to Wilde’s Oxford days when he was the unsuccessful competitor for the Chancellor’s English Essay Prize. Perhaps Magdalen, which has never forgiven herself for nurturing the author of Ravenna, may be felicitated on having escaped the further intolerable honour that she might have suffered by seeing crowned again with paltry academic parsley the most highly gifted of all her children in the last century.

Of the lectures, I have only included those which exist, so far as I know, in manuscript; the reports of others in contemporary newspapers being untrustworthy. They were usually delivered [x] from notes and were repeated at various towns in England and America. Here will be found the origin of Whistler’s charges of plagiarism against the author. How far they are justified the reader can decide for himself, Wilde always admitted that, relying on an old and intimate friendship, he asked the artist’s assistance on one occasion for a lecture he had failed to prepare in time. This I presume to be the Address delivered to the Art Students of the Royal Academy in 1883, as Whistler certainly reproduced some of it as his own in the ‘Ten o’clock’ lecture delivered subsequently, in 1885. To what extent an idea may be regarded as a perpetual gift, or whether it is ethically possible to retrieve an idea like an engagement ring, it is not for me to discuss. I would only point out once more that all the works by which Wilde is known throughout Europe were written after the two friends had quarrelled. That Wilde derived a great deal from the older man goes without saying, just as he derived so much in a greater degree from Pater, Ruskin, Arnold and Burne-Jones. Yet the tedious attempt to recognise in every jest of his some original by Whistler induces the criticism that it seems a pity the great painter did not get them off on the public before [xi] he was forestalled. Reluctance from an appeal to publicity was never a weakness in either of the men. Some of Wilde’s more frequently quoted sayings were made at the Old Bailey (though their provenance is often forgotten) or on his death-bed.

As a matter of fact the genius of the two men was entirely different. Wilde was a humourist and a humanist before everything; and his wittiest jests have neither the relentlessness nor the keenness characterising those of the clever American artist. Again, Whistler could no more have obtained the Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek, nor have written The Importance of Being Earnest, and The Soul of Man, than Wilde, even if equipped as a painter, could have evinced that superb restraint characterising the portraits of ‘Miss Alexander,’ ‘Carlyle,’ and other masterpieces. Wilde, though it is not generally known, was something of a draughtsman in his youth.

Poems in Prose were to have been continued. They are the kind of stories which Wilde would tell at a dinner-table, being invented on the spur of the moment, or inspired by the chance observation of some one who managed to get the traditional word in edgeways; or they were [xii] developed from some phrase in a book Wilde might have read during the day. To those who remember hearing them from his lips there must always be a feeling of disappointment on reading them. He overloaded their ornament when he came to transcribe them, and some of his friends did not hesitate to make that criticism to him personally. Though he affected annoyance, I do not think it prevented him from writing the others, which unfortunately exist only in the memories of friends. Miss Aimée Lowther, however, has cleverly noted down some of them in a privately printed volume.

Robert Ross
 

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Footnotes
[1] Plato s Laws; AEschylus  Prometheus Bound.
[2] Somewhat in the same spirit Plato, in his Laws, appeals to the local position of Ilion among the rivers of the plain, as a proof that it was not built till long after the Deluge.
[3] Plutarch remarks that the only evidence Greece possesses of the truth that the legendary power of Athens is no ‘romance or idle story,  is the public and sacred buildings. This is an instance of the exaggerated importance given to ruins against which Thucydides is warning us.
[4] The fictitious sale in the Roman marriage per coemptionem was originally, of course, a real sale.
[5] Notably, of course, in the case of heat and its laws.
6 [6] Cousin errs a good deal in this respect. To say, as he did, ‘Give me the latitude and the longitude of a country, its rivers and its mountains, and I will deduce the race,  is surely a glaring exaggeration.
[7] The monarchical, aristocratical, and democratic elements of the Roman constitution are referred to.
[8] Polybius, vi. 9. [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]
[9] [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]
[10] The various stages are [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], [Greek text which cannot be reproduced].
[11] Polybius, xii. 24.
[12] Polybius, i. 4, viii. 4, specially; and really Passim.
[13] He makes one exception.
[14] Polybius, viii. 4.
[15] Polybius, xvi. 12.
[16] Polybius, viii. 4: [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]
[17] Polybius resembled Gibbon in many respects. Like him he held that all religions were to the philosopher equally false, to the vulgar equally true, to the statesman equally useful.
[18] Cf. Polybius, xii. 25, [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]
[19] Polybius, xxii. 8.
[20] I mean particularly as regards his sweeping denunciation of the complete moral decadence of Greek society during the Peloponnesain War, which, from what remains to us of Athenian literature, we know must have been completely exaggerated. Or, rather, he is looking at men merely in their political dealings: and in politics the man who is personally honourable and refined will not scruple to do anything for his party.
[21] Polybius, xii. 25.
[22] The Two Paths, Lect. iii. p. 123 (1859 ed.).
[...; missing data]
[29] Plato’s Laws; Æschylus’ Prometheus Bound.
[31] Somewhat in the same spirit Plato, in his Laws, appeals to the local position of Ilion among the rivers of the plain, as a proof that it was not built till long after the Deluge.
[32] Plutarch remarks that the only evidence Greece possesses of the truth that the legendary power of Athens is no ‘romance or idle story,’ is the public and sacred buildings. This is an instance of the exaggerated importance given to ruins against which Thucydides is warning us.
[37] The fictitious sale in the Roman marriage per coemptionem was originally, of course, a real sale.
[43] Notably, of course, in the case of heat and its laws.
[57] Cousin errs a good deal in this respect. To say, as he did, ‘Give me the latitude and the longitude of a country, its rivers and its mountains, and I will deduce the race,’ is surely a glaring exaggeration.
[59] The monarchical, aristocratical, and democratic elements of the Roman constitution are referred to.
[63a] Polybius, vi. 9. αὔτη πολιτειῶν ἀνακύκλωσις, αὔτς φύσεως οἰκονομία.
[63b] χωρὶς ὀργῆς ἢ φθόνου ποιούμεηος τὴν ἀπόφασιν.
[63c] The various stages are σύστασις, αὔξησις, ἀκμή, μεταβολὴ ἐις τοὔμπαλιν.
[68] Polybius, xii. 24.
[69a] Polybius, i. 4, viii. 4, specially; and really passim.
[69b] He makes one exception.
[69c] Polybius, viii. 4.
[71] Polybius, xvi. 12.
[72a] Polybius, viii. 4: τὸ παραδοξάτον καθ’ ἡμᾶς ἔργον ἡ τύχη συνετέλεσε; τοῦτο δ’ ἔστι τὸ πάντα τὰ γνωριζόμενα μέρη τῆς οἰκουμένης ὑπὸ μίαν ἀρχὴν καὶ δυναστείαν ἀγαγεῖν, ὂ πρότερον οὐχ εὑρίσκεται γεγονός.
[72b] Polybius resembled Gibbon in many respects. Like him he held that all religions were to the philosopher equally false, to the vulgar equally true, to the statesman equally useful.
[76] Cf. Polybius, xii. 25, ἐπεὶ ψιλῶς λεγόμενον αὐτὄ γεγονὸς ψυχαγωγεῖ μέν, ὠφελεῖ δ’ οὐδέν· προστεθείσης δὲ τῆς αἰτίας ἔγκαρπος ἡ τῆς ἱστορίας γίγνεται χρῆσις.
[78] Polybius, xxii. 8.
[81] I mean particularly as regards his sweeping denunciation of the complete moral decadence of Greek society during the Peloponnesain War, which, from what remains to us of Athenian literature, we know must have been completely exaggerated. Or, rather, he is looking at men merely in their political dealings: and in politics the man who is personally honourable and refined will not scruple to do anything for his party.
[86] Polybius, xii. 25.
[124] As an instance of the inaccuracy of published reports of this lecture, it may be mentioned that all unauthorised versions give this passage as The artist may trace the depressed revolution of Bunthorne simply to the lack of technical means!
[206] The Two Paths, Lect. iii. p. 123 (1859 ed.).

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