Page:Wilde - De profundis, 1915.djvu/49

Rh world of coarse uncompleted passion, of appetite without distinction, desire without limit, and formless greed. Yet when all is said surely might have been able to understand or conceive, at any rate that on the ordinary grounds of mere psychological curiosity it would have been more interesting to me to hear from  than to learn that Alfred Austin was trying to bring out a volume of poems; that George Street was writing dramatic criticism for the Daily Chronicle; or that by one who cannot speak a panegyric without stammering, Mrs. Meynell had been pronounced to be the new Sibyl of style. . ..

Other miserable men when they are thrown into prison, if they are robbed of the beauty of the world are at least safe in some measure from the world's most deadly slings, most awful arrows. They can hide in the darkness of their cells and of their very disgrace make a mode of sanctuary. The world having had its will goes its way, and they are left to suffer undisturbed. With me it has been different.