Page:Writings of Oscar Wilde - Volume 01.djvu/41

Rh has, too, in my opinion, the disadvantage of treating a sacred subject in a distasteful manner. This wilful importation of sensuality into sacred stories—as, for example, some writers have chosen to treat the story of Christ and the Magdalen—is, to say the least of it, vulgar; and, with all his style, those who knew Wilde did not miss a marked element of vulgarity in his nature alongside so much that was fine and even exquisite. For Wilde's prose I confess a partiality, though I am well aware of its Corinthian faults, its gaudy effects, its over-decoration. Yet, at its best, it combines two qualities seldom found together in prose: the beauty of an arabesque, and eloquence of rhythm. The passage from "The Decay of Lying" to which I have already referred is a good example of it, and in Wilde's fairy-tales, particularly in The House of Pomegranates, there are many pages of the same beautiful prose. .

Speaking of Wilde's prose, that famous phrase of his in his essay on Wainwright, the poisoner, might almost be used as Wilde's own epitaph: "The fact of a man being a poisoner is nothing against his prose." Whatever were Wilde's sins against society, he paid for them