Page:Writings of Oscar Wilde - Volume 01.djvu/27

Rh "Am I a great poet?" "Am I a great playwright?" "Am I a great wit?" but rather: "Am I—Oscar Wilde?" That is: "Have I written my name, stamped my personality, across the face of this world?"

Blue china, sunflowers, knee-breeches, æstheticism, green carnations, poetry, prose, or plays—or even tragic scandal—all these were indifferently used as means towards the making of the legend of himself. He wished to be known—not as the poet Oscar Wilde, or the playwright Oscar Wilde; but merely as—Oscar Wilde. It was a superb egoism, the superbest egoism of our time. But, whatever Wilde really thought of his own writings, whether or not he did them, as Stevenson used to say, "just for fun," the fact remains that he was a true poet, a maker of lovely fairy tales, a critic of society whose epigrams had a singular dynamic, disintegrating, power, and easily the most brilliant and distinguished playwright of his time. He was also, in spite of his Gallic vagaries, an exceedingly sane critic of literature, having not only the temperament, but no little of the equipment of the scholar; if his prose was a little "plush," yet he wrote many pages that haunt the memory; and