Page:Autobiography of an Androgyne 1918 book scan.djvu/291

Rh of love songs or the maker of clever comedies—Mr. John Smith worth more than Shakespeare [who was a rake and very likely a psychical hermaphrodite], Harris " pointed out that Wilde's offence was pathological and not criminal and would not be punished in a properly constituted state." Harris is quoted further:

"You admit that we punish crime to prevent it spreading; wipe this sin off the statute book and you would not increase the sinners by one: then why punish them?"

[Another guest of the journalist: "Oi'd whip such sinners to death, so I would. Hangin's too good for them."

"You only punished lepers in the Middle Ages because you believed that leprosy was catching: this malady is not even catching."

"Faith, Oi'd punish it with extermination." . ..

"You are very bitter: I'm not; you see, I have no sexual jealousy to inflame me." Oscar Wilde deserved his fall—possibly not because he was a pederast, but because he flaunted his pederasty before the world, and because he was otherwise anti-ethical and anti-religious in the highest degree. After two years in prison, he never again set foot in the British Empire. His wife would never again even see him. He lost all ambition to put to use his extraordinary literary talents. For the rest of his life he made his home for the most part in Paris. Apparently he indulged his penchant more than ever. He remarked once that life would not be worth living if desire should die, as compared with the author's heartfelt wish that it might die in himself. He was