The Preface

The artist is the cre­ator of beau­ti­ful things. To re­veal art and con­ceal the artist is art’s aim. The critic is he who can trans­late into an­other man­ner or a new ma­ter­ial his im­pres­sion of beau­ti­ful things.

The highest as the low­est form of cri­ti­cism is a mode of auto­bi­o­graphy. Those who find ugly mean­ings in beau­ti­ful things are cor­rupt without be­ing charm­ing. This is a fault.

Those who find beau­ti­ful mean­ings in beau­ti­ful things are the cul­tiv­ated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beau­ti­ful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an im­moral book. Books are well writ­ten, or badly writ­ten. That is all.

The nine­teenth cen­tury dis­like of real­ism is the rage of Caliban see­ing his own face in a glass.

The nine­teenth cen­tury dis­like of ro­man­ti­cism is the rage of Caliban not see­ing his own face in a glass. The moral life of man forms part of the sub­ject-mat­ter of the artist, but the mor­al­ity of art con­sists in the per­fect use of an im­per­fect me­dium. No artist de­sires to prove any­thing. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has eth­ical sym­path­ies. An eth­ical sym­pathy in an artist is an un­par­don­able man­ner­ism of style. No artist is ever mor­bid. The artist can ex­press everything. Thought and lan­guage are to the artist in­stru­ments of an art. Vice and vir­tue are to the artist ma­ter­i­als for an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the mu­si­cian. From the point of view of feel­ing, the actor’s craft is the type. All art is at once sur­face and sym­bol. Those who go be­neath the sur­face do so at their peril. Those who read the sym­bol do so at their peril. It is the spec­tator, and not life, that art really mir­rors. Diversity of opin­ion about a work of art shows that the work is new, com­plex, and vi­tal. When crit­ics dis­agree, the artist is in ac­cord with him­self. We can for­give a man for mak­ing a use­ful thing as long as he does not ad­mire it. The only ex­cuse for mak­ing a use­less thing is that one ad­mires it in­tensely.

All art is quite use­less.

Os­car Wilde.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

I

The stu­dio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light sum­mer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more del­ic­ate per­fume of the pink-flower­ing thorn.

From the corner of the di­van of Per­sian saddle­bags on which he was ly­ing, smoking, as was his cus­tom, in­nu­mer­able ci­gar­ettes, Lord Henry Wot­ton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-col­oured blos­soms of a laburnum, whose trem­u­lous branches seemed hardly able to bear the bur­den of a beauty so flame­like as theirs; and now and then the fant­astic shad­ows of birds in flight flit­ted across the long tussore-silk cur­tains that were stretched in front of the huge win­dow, pro­du­cing a kind of mo­ment­ary Japan­ese ef­fect, and mak­ing him think of those pal­lid, jade-faced paint­ers of Tokyo who, through the me­dium of an art that is ne­ces­sar­ily im­mob­ile, seek to con­vey the sense of swift­ness and mo­tion. The sul­len mur­mur of the bees shoul­der­ing their way through the long un­mown grass, or circ­ling with mono­ton­ous in­sist­ence round the dusty gilt horns of the strag­gling wood­bine, seemed to make the still­ness more op­press­ive. The dim roar of Lon­don was like the bour­don note of a dis­tant or­gan.

In the centre of the room, clamped to an up­right easel, stood the full-length por­trait of a young man of ex­traordin­ary per­sonal beauty, and in front of it, some little dis­tance away, was sit­ting the artist him­self, Basil Hall­ward, whose sud­den dis­ap­pear­ance some years ago caused, at the time, such pub­lic ex­cite­ment and gave rise to so many strange con­jec­tures.

As the painter looked at the gra­cious and comely form he had so skil­fully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleas­ure passed across his face, and seemed about to linger there. But he sud­denly star­ted up, and clos­ing his eyes, placed his fin­gers upon the lids, as though he sought to im­prison within his brain some curi­ous dream from which he feared he might awake.

“It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done,” said Lord Henry lan­guidly. “You must cer­tainly send it next year to the Gros­venor. The Academy is too large and too vul­gar. Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been able to see the pic­tures, which was dread­ful, or so many pic­tures that I have not been able to see the people, which was worse. The Gros­venor is really the only place.”

“I don’t think I shall send it any­where,” he answered, toss­ing his head back in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him at Ox­ford. “No, I won’t send it any­where.”

Lord Henry el­ev­ated his eye­brows and looked at him in amazement through the thin blue wreaths of smoke that curled up in such fanci­ful whorls from his heavy, opium-tain­ted ci­gar­ette. “Not send it any­where? My dear fel­low, why? Have you any reason? What odd chaps you paint­ers are! You do any­thing in the world to gain a repu­ta­tion. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than be­ing talked about, and that is not be­ing talked about. A por­trait like this would set you far above all the young men in Eng­land, and make the old men quite jeal­ous, if old men are ever cap­able of any emo­tion.”

“I know you will laugh at me,” he replied, “but I really can’t ex­hibit it. I have put too much of my­self into it.”

Lord Henry stretched him­self out on the di­van and laughed.

“Yes, I knew you would; but it is quite true, all the same.”

“Too much of your­self in it! Upon my word, Basil, I didn’t know you were so vain; and I really can’t see any re­semb­lance between you, with your rugged strong face and your coal-black hair, and this young Adonis, who looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves. Why, my dear Basil, he is a Nar­cissus, and you—well, of course you have an in­tel­lec­tual ex­pres­sion and all that. But beauty, real beauty, ends where an in­tel­lec­tual ex­pres­sion be­gins. In­tel­lect is in it­self a mode of ex­ag­ger­a­tion, and des­troys the har­mony of any face. The mo­ment one sits down to think, one be­comes all nose, or all fore­head, or some­thing hor­rid. Look at the suc­cess­ful men in any of the learned pro­fes­sions. How per­fectly hideous they are! Ex­cept, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don’t think. A bishop keeps on say­ing at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eight­een, and as a nat­ural con­sequence he al­ways looks ab­so­lutely de­light­ful. Your mys­ter­i­ous young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose pic­ture really fas­cin­ates me, never thinks. I feel quite sure of that. He is some brain­less beau­ti­ful creature who should be al­ways here in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and al­ways here in sum­mer when we want some­thing to chill our in­tel­li­gence. Don’t flat­ter your­self, Basil: you are not in the least like him.”

“You don’t un­der­stand me, Harry,” answered the artist. “Of course I am not like him. I know that per­fectly well. Indeed, I should be sorry to look like him. You shrug your shoulders? I am telling you the truth. There is a fatal­ity about all phys­ical and in­tel­lec­tual dis­tinc­tion, the sort of fatal­ity that seems to dog through his­tory the fal­ter­ing steps of kings. It is bet­ter not to be dif­fer­ent from one’s fel­lows. The ugly and the stu­pid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know noth­ing of vic­tory, they are at least spared the know­ledge of de­feat. They live as we all should live—un­dis­turbed, in­dif­fer­ent, and without dis­quiet. They neither bring ruin upon oth­ers, nor ever re­ceive it from alien hands. Your rank and wealth, Harry; my brains, such as they are—my art, whatever it may be worth; Dorian Gray’s good looks—we shall all suf­fer for what the gods have given us, suf­fer ter­ribly.”

“Dorian Gray? Is that his name?” asked Lord Henry, walk­ing across the stu­dio to­wards Basil Hall­ward.

“Yes, that is his name. I didn’t in­tend to tell it to you.”

“But why not?”

“Oh, I can’t ex­plain. When I like people im­mensely, I never tell their names to any­one. It is like sur­ren­der­ing a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make mod­ern life mys­ter­i­ous or mar­vel­lous to us. The com­mon­est thing is de­light­ful if one only hides it. When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am go­ing. If I did, I would lose all my pleas­ure. It is a silly habit, I dare say, but some­how it seems to bring a great deal of ro­mance into one’s life. I sup­pose you think me aw­fully fool­ish about it?”

“Not at all,” answered Lord Henry, “not at all, my dear Basil. You seem to for­get that I am mar­ried, and the one charm of mar­riage is that it makes a life of de­cep­tion ab­so­lutely ne­ces­sary for both parties. I never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am do­ing. When we meet—we do meet oc­ca­sion­ally, when we dine out to­gether, or go down to the Duke’s—we tell each other the most ab­surd stor­ies with the most ser­i­ous faces. My wife is very good at it—much bet­ter, in fact, than I am. She never gets con­fused over her dates, and I al­ways do. But when she does find me out, she makes no row at all. I some­times wish she would; but she merely laughs at me.”

“I hate the way you talk about your mar­ried life, Harry,” said Basil Hall­ward, strolling to­wards the door that led into the garden. “I be­lieve that you are really a very good hus­band, but that you are thor­oughly ashamed of your own vir­tues. You are an ex­traordin­ary fel­low. You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your cyn­icism is simply a pose.”

“Be­ing nat­ural is simply a pose, and the most ir­rit­at­ing pose I know,” cried Lord Henry, laugh­ing; and the two young men went out into the garden to­gether and en­sconced them­selves on a long bam­boo seat that stood in the shade of a tall laurel bush. The sun­light slipped over the pol­ished leaves. In the grass, white dais­ies were trem­u­lous.

After a pause, Lord Henry pulled out his watch. “I am afraid I must be go­ing, Basil,” he mur­mured, “and be­fore I go, I in­sist on your an­swer­ing a ques­tion I put to you some time ago.”

“What is that?” said the painter, keep­ing his eyes fixed on the ground.

“You know quite well.”

“I do not, Harry.”

“Well, I will tell you what it is. I want you to ex­plain to me why you won’t ex­hibit Dorian Gray’s pic­ture. I want the real reason.”

“I told you the real reason.”

“No, you did not. You said it was be­cause there was too much of your­self in it. Now, that is child­ish.”

“Harry,” said Basil Hall­ward, look­ing him straight in the face, “every por­trait that is painted with feel­ing is a por­trait of the artist, not of the sit­ter. The sit­ter is merely the ac­ci­dent, the oc­ca­sion. It is not he who is re­vealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the col­oured can­vas, re­veals him­self. The reason I will not ex­hibit this pic­ture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own soul.”

Lord Henry laughed. “And what is that?” he asked.

“I will tell you,” said Hall­ward; but an ex­pres­sion of per­plex­ity came over his face.

“I am all ex­pect­a­tion, Basil,” con­tin­ued his com­pan­ion, glan­cing at him.

“Oh, there is really very little to tell, Harry,” answered the painter; “and I am afraid you will hardly un­der­stand it. Per­haps you will hardly be­lieve it.”

Lord Henry smiled, and lean­ing down, plucked a pink-pet­alled daisy from the grass and ex­amined it. “I am quite sure I shall un­der­stand it,” he replied, gaz­ing in­tently at the little golden, white-feathered disk, “and as for be­liev­ing things, I can be­lieve any­thing, provided that it is quite in­cred­ible.”

The wind shook some blos­soms from the trees, and the heavy lilac-blooms, with their clus­ter­ing stars, moved to and fro in the lan­guid air. A grasshop­per began to chir­rup by the wall, and like a blue thread a long thin dragon­fly floated past on its brown gauze wings. Lord Henry felt as if he could hear Basil Hall­ward’s heart beat­ing, and wondered what was com­ing.

“The story is simply this,” said the painter after some time. “Two months ago I went to a crush at Lady Bran­don’s. You know we poor artists have to show ourselves in so­ci­ety from time to time, just to re­mind the pub­lic that we are not sav­ages. With an even­ing coat and a white tie, as you told me once, any­body, even a stock­broker, can gain a repu­ta­tion for be­ing civ­il­ized. Well, after I had been in the room about ten minutes, talk­ing to huge over­dressed dow­agers and te­di­ous aca­dem­i­cians, I sud­denly be­came con­scious that someone was look­ing at me. I turned halfway round and saw Dorian Gray for the first time. When our eyes met, I felt that I was grow­ing pale. A curi­ous sen­sa­tion of ter­ror came over me. I knew that I had come face to face with someone whose mere per­son­al­ity was so fas­cin­at­ing that, if I al­lowed it to do so, it would ab­sorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art it­self. I did not want any ex­ternal in­flu­ence in my life. You know your­self, Harry, how in­de­pend­ent I am by nature. I have al­ways been my own mas­ter; had at least al­ways been so, till I met Dorian Gray. Then—but I don’t know how to ex­plain it to you. So­mething seemed to tell me that I was on the verge of a ter­rible crisis in my life. I had a strange feel­ing that fate had in store for me ex­quis­ite joys and ex­quis­ite sor­rows. I grew afraid and turned to quit the room. It was not con­science that made me do so: it was a sort of cow­ardice. I take no credit to my­self for try­ing to es­cape.”

“Con­science and cow­ardice are really the same things, Basil. Con­science is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.”

“I don’t be­lieve that, Harry, and I don’t be­lieve you do either. However, whatever was my motive—and it may have been pride, for I used to be very proud—I cer­tainly struggled to the door. There, of course, I stumbled against Lady Bran­don. ‘You are not go­ing to run away so soon, Mr. Hall­ward?’ she screamed out. You know her curi­ously shrill voice?”

“Yes; she is a pea­cock in everything but beauty,” said Lord Henry, pulling the daisy to bits with his long nervous fin­gers.

“I could not get rid of her. She brought me up to roy­al­ties, and people with stars and garters, and eld­erly ladies with gi­gantic tiaras and par­rot noses. She spoke of me as her dearest friend. I had only met her once be­fore, but she took it into her head to li­on­ize me. I be­lieve some pic­ture of mine had made a great suc­cess at the time, at least had been chattered about in the penny news­pa­pers, which is the nine­teenth-cen­tury stand­ard of im­mor­tal­ity. Sud­denly I found my­self face to face with the young man whose per­son­al­ity had so strangely stirred me. We were quite close, al­most touch­ing. Our eyes met again. It was reck­less of me, but I asked Lady Bran­don to in­tro­duce me to him. Per­haps it was not so reck­less, after all. It was simply in­ev­it­able. We would have spoken to each other without any in­tro­duc­tion. I am sure of that. Dorian told me so af­ter­wards. He, too, felt that we were destined to know each other.”

“And how did Lady Bran­don de­scribe this won­der­ful young man?” asked his com­pan­ion. “I know she goes in for giv­ing a rapid pré­cis of all her guests. I re­mem­ber her bring­ing me up to a truc­u­lent and red-faced old gen­tle­man covered all over with or­ders and rib­bons, and hiss­ing into my ear, in a tra­gic whis­per which must have been per­fectly aud­ible to every­body in the room, the most astound­ing de­tails. I simply fled. I like to find out people for my­self. But Lady Bran­don treats her guests ex­actly as an auc­tion­eer treats his goods. She either ex­plains them en­tirely away, or tells one everything about them ex­cept what one wants to know.”

“Poor Lady Bran­don! You are hard on her, Harry!” said Hall­ward list­lessly.

“My dear fel­low, she tried to found a salon, and only suc­ceeded in open­ing a res­taur­ant. How could I ad­mire her? But tell me, what did she say about Mr. Dorian Gray?”

“Oh, some­thing like, ‘Charm­ing boy—poor dear mother and I ab­so­lutely in­sep­ar­able. Quite for­get what he does—afraid he—doesn’t do any­thing—oh, yes, plays the pi­ano—or is it the vi­olin, dear Mr. Gray?’ Neither of us could help laugh­ing, and we be­came friends at once.”

“Laughter is not at all a bad be­gin­ning for a friend­ship, and it is far the best end­ing for one,” said the young lord, pluck­ing an­other daisy.

Hall­ward shook his head. “You don’t un­der­stand what friend­ship is, Harry,” he mur­mured—“or what enmity is, for that mat­ter. You like every­one; that is to say, you are in­dif­fer­ent to every­one.”

“How hor­ribly un­just of you!” cried Lord Henry, tilt­ing his hat back and look­ing up at the little clouds that, like rav­elled skeins of glossy white silk, were drift­ing across the hol­lowed tur­quoise of the sum­mer sky. “Yes; hor­ribly un­just of you. I make a great dif­fer­ence between people. I choose my friends for their good looks, my ac­quaint­ances for their good char­ac­ters, and my en­emies for their good in­tel­lects. A man can­not be too care­ful in the choice of his en­emies. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some in­tel­lec­tual power, and con­sequently they all ap­pre­ci­ate me. Is that very vain of me? I think it is rather vain.”

“I should think it was, Harry. But ac­cord­ing to your cat­egory I must be merely an ac­quaint­ance.”

“My dear old Basil, you are much more than an ac­quaint­ance.”

“And much less than a friend. A sort of brother, I sup­pose?”

“Oh, broth­ers! I don’t care for broth­ers. My elder brother won’t die, and my younger broth­ers seem never to do any­thing else.”

“Harry!” ex­claimed Hall­ward, frown­ing.

“My dear fel­low, I am not quite ser­i­ous. But I can’t help de­test­ing my re­la­tions. I sup­pose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people hav­ing the same faults as ourselves. I quite sym­path­ize with the rage of the Eng­lish demo­cracy against what they call the vices of the up­per or­ders. The masses feel that drunk­en­ness, stu­pid­ity, and im­mor­al­ity should be their own spe­cial prop­erty, and that if any one of us makes an ass of him­self, he is poach­ing on their pre­serves. When poor South­wark got into the di­vorce court, their in­dig­na­tion was quite mag­ni­fi­cent. And yet I don’t sup­pose that ten per­cent of the pro­let­ariat live cor­rectly.”

“I don’t agree with a single word that you have said, and, what is more, Harry, I feel sure you don’t either.”

Lord Henry stroked his poin­ted brown beard and tapped the toe of his pat­ent-leather boot with a tas­selled ebony cane. “How Eng­lish you are Basil! That is the second time you have made that ob­ser­va­tion. If one puts for­ward an idea to a true Eng­lish­man—al­ways a rash thing to do—he never dreams of con­sid­er­ing whether the idea is right or wrong. The only thing he con­siders of any im­port­ance is whether one be­lieves it one­self. Now, the value of an idea has noth­ing what­so­ever to do with the sin­cer­ity of the man who ex­presses it. Indeed, the prob­ab­il­it­ies are that the more in­sin­cere the man is, the more purely in­tel­lec­tual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be col­oured by either his wants, his de­sires, or his pre­ju­dices. However, I don’t pro­pose to dis­cuss polit­ics, so­ci­ology, or meta­phys­ics with you. I like per­sons bet­ter than prin­ciples, and I like per­sons with no prin­ciples bet­ter than any­thing else in the world. Tell me more about Mr. Dorian Gray. How of­ten do you see him?”

“Every day. I couldn’t be happy if I didn’t see him every day. He is ab­so­lutely ne­ces­sary to me.”

“How ex­traordin­ary! I thought you would never care for any­thing but your art.”

“He is all my art to me now,” said the painter gravely. “I some­times think, Harry, that there are only two eras of any im­port­ance in the world’s his­tory. The first is the ap­pear­ance of a new me­dium for art, and the second is the ap­pear­ance of a new per­son­al­ity for art also. What the in­ven­tion of oil-paint­ing was to the Vene­tians, the face of Antin­ous was to late Greek sculp­ture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some day be to me. It is not merely that I paint from him, draw from him, sketch from him. Of course, I have done all that. But he is much more to me than a model or a sit­ter. I won’t tell you that I am dis­sat­is­fied with what I have done of him, or that his beauty is such that art can­not ex­press it. There is noth­ing that art can­not ex­press, and I know that the work I have done, since I met Dorian Gray, is good work, is the best work of my life. But in some curi­ous way—I won­der will you un­der­stand me?—his per­son­al­ity has sug­ges­ted to me an en­tirely new man­ner in art, an en­tirely new mode of style. I see things dif­fer­ently, I think of them dif­fer­ently. I can now re­cre­ate life in a way that was hid­den from me be­fore. ‘A dream of form in days of thought’—who is it who says that? I for­get; but it is what Dorian Gray has been to me. The merely vis­ible pres­ence of this lad—for he seems to me little more than a lad, though he is really over twenty—his merely vis­ible pres­ence—ah! I won­der can you real­ize all that that means? Un­con­sciously he defines for me the lines of a fresh school, a school that is to have in it all the pas­sion of the ro­mantic spirit, all the per­fec­tion of the spirit that is Greek. The har­mony of soul and body—how much that is! We in our mad­ness have sep­ar­ated the two, and have in­ven­ted a real­ism that is vul­gar, an ideal­ity that is void. Harry! if you only knew what Dorian Gray is to me! You re­mem­ber that land­scape of mine, for which Agnew offered me such a huge price but which I would not part with? It is one of the best things I have ever done. And why is it so? Be­cause, while I was paint­ing it, Dorian Gray sat be­side me. Some subtle in­flu­ence passed from him to me, and for the first time in my life I saw in the plain wood­land the won­der I had al­ways looked for and al­ways missed.”

“Basil, this is ex­traordin­ary! I must see Dorian Gray.”

Hall­ward got up from the seat and walked up and down the garden. After some time he came back. “Harry,” he said, “Dorian Gray is to me simply a motive in art. You might see noth­ing in him. I see everything in him. He is never more present in my work than when no im­age of him is there. He is a sug­ges­tion, as I have said, of a new man­ner. I find him in the curves of cer­tain lines, in the love­li­ness and sub­tleties of cer­tain col­ours. That is all.”

“Then why won’t you ex­hibit his por­trait?” asked Lord Henry.

“Be­cause, without in­tend­ing it, I have put into it some ex­pres­sion of all this curi­ous artistic id­ol­atry, of which, of course, I have never cared to speak to him. He knows noth­ing about it. He shall never know any­thing about it. But the world might guess it, and I will not bare my soul to their shal­low pry­ing eyes. My heart shall never be put un­der their mi­cro­scope. There is too much of my­self in the thing, Harry—too much of my­self!”

“Po­ets are not so scru­pu­lous as you are. They know how use­ful pas­sion is for pub­lic­a­tion. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many edi­tions.”

“I hate them for it,” cried Hall­ward. “An artist should cre­ate beau­ti­ful things, but should put noth­ing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of auto­bi­o­graphy. We have lost the ab­stract sense of beauty. Some day I will show the world what it is; and for that reason the world shall never see my por­trait of Dorian Gray.”

“I think you are wrong, Basil, but I won’t ar­gue with you. It is only the in­tel­lec­tu­ally lost who ever ar­gue. Tell me, is Dorian Gray very fond of you?”

The painter con­sidered for a few mo­ments. “He likes me,” he answered after a pause; “I know he likes me. Of course I flat­ter him dread­fully. I find a strange pleas­ure in say­ing things to him that I know I shall be sorry for hav­ing said. As a rule, he is charm­ing to me, and we sit in the stu­dio and talk of a thou­sand things. Now and then, how­ever, he is hor­ribly thought­less, and seems to take a real de­light in giv­ing me pain. Then I feel, Harry, that I have given away my whole soul to someone who treats it as if it were a flower to put in his coat, a bit of dec­or­a­tion to charm his van­ity, an or­na­ment for a sum­mer’s day.”

“Days in sum­mer, Basil, are apt to linger,” mur­mured Lord Henry. “Per­haps you will tire sooner than he will. It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty. That ac­counts for the fact that we all take such pains to overedu­cate ourselves. In the wild struggle for ex­ist­ence, we want to have some­thing that en­dures, and so we fill our minds with rub­bish and facts, in the silly hope of keep­ing our place. The thor­oughly well-in­formed man—that is the mod­ern ideal. And the mind of the thor­oughly well-in­formed man is a dread­ful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all mon­sters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value. I think you will tire first, all the same. Some day you will look at your friend, and he will seem to you to be a little out of draw­ing, or you won’t like his tone of col­our, or some­thing. You will bit­terly re­proach him in your own heart, and ser­i­ously think that he has be­haved very badly to you. The next time he calls, you will be per­fectly cold and in­dif­fer­ent. It will be a great pity, for it will al­ter you. What you have told me is quite a ro­mance, a ro­mance of art one might call it, and the worst of hav­ing a ro­mance of any kind is that it leaves one so un­ro­mantic.”

“Harry, don’t talk like that. As long as I live, the per­son­al­ity of Dorian Gray will dom­in­ate me. You can’t feel what I feel. You change too of­ten.”

“Ah, my dear Basil, that is ex­actly why I can feel it. Those who are faith­ful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faith­less who know love’s tra­gedies.” And Lord Henry struck a light on a dainty sil­ver case and began to smoke a ci­gar­ette with a self-con­scious and sat­is­fied air, as if he had summed up the world in a phrase. There was a rustle of chir­rup­ing spar­rows in the green lac­quer leaves of the ivy, and the blue cloud-shad­ows chased them­selves across the grass like swal­lows. How pleas­ant it was in the garden! And how de­light­ful other people’s emo­tions were!—much more de­light­ful than their ideas, it seemed to him. One’s own soul, and the pas­sions of one’s friends—those were the fas­cin­at­ing things in life. He pic­tured to him­self with si­lent amuse­ment the te­di­ous lunch­eon that he had missed by stay­ing so long with Basil Hall­ward. Had he gone to his aunt’s, he would have been sure to have met Lord Good­body there, and the whole con­ver­sa­tion would have been about the feed­ing of the poor and the ne­ces­sity for model lodging-houses. Each class would have preached the im­port­ance of those vir­tues, for whose ex­er­cise there was no ne­ces­sity in their own lives. The rich would have spoken on the value of thrift, and the idle grown elo­quent over the dig­nity of la­bour. It was charm­ing to have es­caped all that! As he thought of his aunt, an idea seemed to strike him. He turned to Hall­ward and said, “My dear fel­low, I have just re­membered.”

“Re­membered what, Harry?”

“Where I heard the name of Dorian Gray.”

“Where was it?” asked Hall­ward, with a slight frown.

“Don’t look so angry, Basil. It was at my aunt, Lady Agatha’s. She told me she had dis­covered a won­der­ful young man who was go­ing to help her in the East End, and that his name was Dorian Gray. I am bound to state that she never told me he was good-look­ing. Wo­men have no ap­pre­ci­ation of good looks; at least, good wo­men have not. She said that he was very earn­est and had a beau­ti­ful nature. I at once pic­tured to my­self a creature with spec­tacles and lank hair, hor­ribly freckled, and tramp­ing about on huge feet. I wish I had known it was your friend.”

“I am very glad you didn’t, Harry.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want you to meet him.”

“You don’t want me to meet him?”

“No.”

“Mr. Dorian Gray is in the stu­dio, sir,” said the but­ler, com­ing into the garden.

“You must in­tro­duce me now,” cried Lord Henry, laugh­ing.

The painter turned to his ser­vant, who stood blink­ing in the sun­light. “Ask Mr. Gray to wait, Parker: I shall be in in a few mo­ments.” The man bowed and went up the walk.

Then he looked at Lord Henry. “Dorian Gray is my dearest friend,” he said. “He has a simple and a beau­ti­ful nature. Your aunt was quite right in what she said of him. Don’t spoil him. Don’t try to in­flu­ence him. Your in­flu­ence would be bad. The world is wide, and has many mar­vel­lous people in it. Don’t take away from me the one per­son who gives to my art whatever charm it pos­sesses: my life as an artist de­pends on him. Mind, Harry, I trust you.” He spoke very slowly, and the words seemed wrung out of him al­most against his will.

“What non­sense you talk!” said Lord Henry, smil­ing, and tak­ing Hall­ward by the arm, he al­most led him into the house.

II

As they entered they saw Dorian Gray. He was seated at the pi­ano, with his back to them, turn­ing over the pages of a volume of Schu­mann’s “Forest Scenes.” “You must lend me these, Basil,” he cried. “I want to learn them. They are per­fectly charm­ing.”

“That en­tirely de­pends on how you sit today, Dorian.”

“Oh, I am tired of sit­ting, and I don’t want a life-sized por­trait of my­self,” answered the lad, swinging round on the mu­sic-stool in a wil­ful, petu­lant man­ner. When he caught sight of Lord Henry, a faint blush col­oured his cheeks for a mo­ment, and he star­ted up. “I beg your par­don, Basil, but I didn’t know you had any­one with you.”

“This is Lord Henry Wot­ton, Dorian, an old Ox­ford friend of mine. I have just been telling him what a cap­ital sit­ter you were, and now you have spoiled everything.”

“You have not spoiled my pleas­ure in meet­ing you, Mr. Gray,” said Lord Henry, step­ping for­ward and ex­tend­ing his hand. “My aunt has of­ten spoken to me about you. You are one of her fa­vour­ites, and, I am afraid, one of her vic­tims also.”

“I am in Lady Agatha’s black books at present,” answered Dorian with a funny look of pen­it­ence. “I prom­ised to go to a club in White­chapel with her last Tues­day, and I really for­got all about it. We were to have played a duet to­gether—three duets, I be­lieve. I don’t know what she will say to me. I am far too frightened to call.”

“Oh, I will make your peace with my aunt. She is quite de­voted to you. And I don’t think it really mat­ters about your not be­ing there. The audi­ence prob­ably thought it was a duet. When Aunt Agatha sits down to the pi­ano, she makes quite enough noise for two people.”

“That is very hor­rid to her, and not very nice to me,” answered Dorian, laugh­ing.

Lord Henry looked at him. Yes, he was cer­tainly won­der­fully hand­some, with his finely curved scar­let lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair. There was some­thing in his face that made one trust him at once. All the cand­our of youth was there, as well as all youth’s pas­sion­ate pur­ity. One felt that he had kept him­self un­spot­ted from the world. No won­der Basil Hall­ward wor­shipped him.

“You are too charm­ing to go in for phil­an­thropy, Mr. Gray—far too charm­ing.” And Lord Henry flung him­self down on the di­van and opened his ci­gar­ette-case.

The painter had been busy mix­ing his col­ours and get­ting his brushes ready. He was look­ing wor­ried, and when he heard Lord Henry’s last re­mark, he glanced at him, hes­it­ated for a mo­ment, and then said, “Harry, I want to fin­ish this pic­ture today. Would you think it aw­fully rude of me if I asked you to go away?”

Lord Henry smiled and looked at Dorian Gray. “Am I to go, Mr. Gray?” he asked.

“Oh, please don’t, Lord Henry. I see that Basil is in one of his sulky moods, and I can’t bear him when he sulks. Besides, I want you to tell me why I should not go in for phil­an­thropy.”

“I don’t know that I shall tell you that, Mr. Gray. It is so te­di­ous a sub­ject that one would have to talk ser­i­ously about it. But I cer­tainly shall not run away, now that you have asked me to stop. You don’t really mind, Basil, do you? You have of­ten told me that you liked your sit­ters to have someone to chat to.”

Hall­ward bit his lip. “If Dorian wishes it, of course you must stay. Dorian’s whims are laws to every­body, ex­cept him­self.”

Lord Henry took up his hat and gloves. “You are very press­ing, Basil, but I am afraid I must go. I have prom­ised to meet a man at the Or­leans. Good­bye, Mr. Gray. Come and see me some af­ter­noon in Curzon Street. I am nearly al­ways at home at five o’clock. Write to me when you are com­ing. I should be sorry to miss you.”

“Basil,” cried Dorian Gray, “if Lord Henry Wot­ton goes, I shall go, too. You never open your lips while you are paint­ing, and it is hor­ribly dull stand­ing on a plat­form and try­ing to look pleas­ant. Ask him to stay. I in­sist upon it.”

“Stay, Harry, to ob­lige Dorian, and to ob­lige me,” said Hall­ward, gaz­ing in­tently at his pic­ture. “It is quite true, I never talk when I am work­ing, and never listen either, and it must be dread­fully te­di­ous for my un­for­tu­nate sit­ters. I beg you to stay.”

“But what about my man at the Or­leans?”

The painter laughed. “I don’t think there will be any dif­fi­culty about that. Sit down again, Harry. And now, Dorian, get up on the plat­form, and don’t move about too much, or pay any at­ten­tion to what Lord Henry says. He has a very bad in­flu­ence over all his friends, with the single ex­cep­tion of my­self.”

Dorian Gray stepped up on the dais with the air of a young Greek mar­tyr, and made a little moue of dis­con­tent to Lord Henry, to whom he had rather taken a fancy. He was so un­like Basil. They made a de­light­ful con­trast. And he had such a beau­ti­ful voice. After a few mo­ments he said to him, “Have you really a very bad in­flu­ence, Lord Henry? As bad as Basil says?”

“There is no such thing as a good in­flu­ence, Mr. Gray. All in­flu­ence is im­moral—im­moral from the sci­entific point of view.”

“Why?”

“Be­cause to in­flu­ence a per­son is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his nat­ural thoughts, or burn with his nat­ural pas­sions. His vir­tues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are bor­rowed. He be­comes an echo of someone else’s mu­sic, an actor of a part that has not been writ­ten for him. The aim of life is self-de­vel­op­ment. To real­ize one’s nature per­fectly—that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of them­selves, nowadays. They have for­got­ten the highest of all du­ties, the duty that one owes to one’s self. Of course, they are char­it­able. They feed the hungry and clothe the beg­gar. But their own souls starve, and are na­ked. Cour­age has gone out of our race. Per­haps we never really had it. The ter­ror of so­ci­ety, which is the basis of mor­als, the ter­ror of God, which is the secret of re­li­gion—these are the two things that gov­ern us. And yet—”

“Just turn your head a little more to the right, Dorian, like a good boy,” said the painter, deep in his work and con­scious only that a look had come into the lad’s face that he had never seen there be­fore.

“And yet,” con­tin­ued Lord Henry, in his low, mu­sical voice, and with that grace­ful wave of the hand that was al­ways so char­ac­ter­istic of him, and that he had even in his Eton days, “I be­lieve that if one man were to live out his life fully and com­pletely, were to give form to every feel­ing, ex­pres­sion to every thought, real­ity to every dream—I be­lieve that the world would gain such a fresh im­pulse of joy that we would for­get all the mal­ad­ies of me­di­aev­al­ism, and re­turn to the Hel­lenic ideal—to some­thing finer, richer than the Hel­lenic ideal, it may be. But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of him­self. The mu­til­a­tion of the sav­age has its tra­gic sur­vival in the self-denial that mars our lives. We are pun­ished for our re­fus­als. Every im­pulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and pois­ons us. The body sins once, and has done with its sin, for ac­tion is a mode of puri­fic­a­tion. Noth­ing re­mains then but the re­col­lec­tion of a pleas­ure, or the lux­ury of a re­gret. The only way to get rid of a tempta­tion is to yield to it. Res­ist it, and your soul grows sick with long­ing for the things it has for­bid­den to it­self, with de­sire for what its mon­strous laws have made mon­strous and un­law­ful. It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain. It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take place also. You, Mr. Gray, you your­self, with your rose-red youth and your rose-white boy­hood, you have had pas­sions that have made you afraid, thoughts that have filled you with ter­ror, day­dreams and sleep­ing dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame—”

“Stop!” faltered Dorian Gray, “stop! you be­wilder me. I don’t know what to say. There is some an­swer to you, but I can­not find it. Don’t speak. Let me think. Or, rather, let me try not to think.”

For nearly ten minutes he stood there, mo­tion­less, with par­ted lips and eyes strangely bright. He was dimly con­scious that en­tirely fresh in­flu­ences were at work within him. Yet they seemed to him to have come really from him­self. The few words that Basil’s friend had said to him—words spoken by chance, no doubt, and with wil­ful para­dox in them—had touched some secret chord that had never been touched be­fore, but that he felt was now vi­brat­ing and throb­bing to curi­ous pulses.

Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many times. But mu­sic was not ar­tic­u­late. It was not a new world, but rather an­other chaos, that it cre­ated in us. Words! Mere words! How ter­rible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not es­cape from them. And yet what a subtle ma­gic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to form­less things, and to have a mu­sic of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there any­thing so real as words?

Yes;

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