Page:Writings of Oscar Wilde - Volume 01.djvu/31

Rh depends on your choice of the proverb for the purpose. This, however, is not true of Wilde's more serious epigrams, which often compress into one seed-like phrase a whole philosophy of life. Take, for example, the apparently flippant remark "We will not go to war with France—because her prose is perfect." Said so, it is apparently a trivial jest, and yet, when you ponder it a little, you see behind it a recognition of that spiritual unity of mankind, which, if more generally recognized, would preserve the peace of nations. Carlyle meant the same thing when he said that England would give up India before she would give up Shakespeare. Of course, it is only a poet's dream, and yet the day may some day come when the sentiment of a spiritual gratitude between nations—as, for example, towards Greece, for having been Greece; towards Italy, for having been Italy—may mitigate somewhat their savage rivalries. Of the purely amusing qualities of Wilde's epigrams, who that has seen his plays need be told? But here again the humour came of their truth; and society, that loves nothing better than to laugh at itself, laughed mainly because