Page:Saltus - Oscar Wilde, an idler's impression.djvu/30

 covering his mouth with his hand, he laughed and said: “It does not seem to me sufficiently vécu.”

Before the enormity of that I fell back. But at once he became more human. He complained that even the opiate of work was denied him, since no one would handle his wares.

The Athenians, who lived surrounded by statues, learned from them the value of silence, the mystery that it lends to beauty, in particular the dignity that it gives to grief. In their tragedies any victim of destiny is as though stricken dumb. Wilde knew that, he knew everything, in addition to being a thorough Hellenist. None the less he told of his fate. It was human, therefore terrible, but it was not the tragic muse. It was merely a tragedy of letters.

Letters, yes, but lower case. Wilde was a third rate poet who occasionally rose to the second class but not once to the first. Prose is more difficult than verse and in it he is rather sloppy. In spite of which,