Page:Writings of Oscar Wilde - Volume 01.djvu/39

Rh not, by any means, always his own. Of his own work, I think he cared most for his prose, for the rhythmical prose of "The Decay of Lying," or "The Dialogue on Criticism," the piled up luxurious sentences, the strange, skilfully used learning, and the beautiful strange words. I well remember the boyish delight with which one afternoon he paced his study declaiming a sentence from "The Decay of Lying," which had particularly taken his fancy—a sentence from one of the most beautiful and characteristic passages of his prose: "She hath hawk-faced gods that follow her and the centaurs are seen running at her side." In this, of course, as I said, Wilde was much the same as other poets—with the difference that he had a voice, which, as I said, snake-charmed even publishers, and prompted his friends now and again to ask him to recite for them the Greek of Homer and Theocritus.

As for Wilde's sense of human comedy, it is too well known to playgoers all over the world to need comment. A rare combination, as I said—so devoted a love of beauty, and so unerring an eye for comedy; as though Keats and Sheridan had been reincarnated in one man.