"I was trembling all over. For a long while I sat, unable to think,
all shaken with wonder and remorse."




CHAPTER III


Oscar Wilde did well at school, but he did still better at college,
where the competition was more severe. He entered Trinity on October
19th, 1871, just three days after his seventeenth birthday. Sir Edward
Sullivan writes me that when Oscar matriculated at Trinity he was
already "a thoroughly good classical scholar of a brilliant type," and
he goes on to give an invaluable snap-shot of him at this time; a
likeness, in fact, the chief features of which grew more and more
characteristic as the years went on.

"He had rooms in College at the north side of one of the older
squares, known as Botany Bay. These rooms were exceedingly grimy and
ill-kept. He never entertained there. On the rare occasions when
visitors were admitted, an unfinished landscape in oils was always on
the easel, in a prominent place in his sitting room. He would
invariably refer to it, telling one in his humorously unconvincing way
that 'he had just put in the butterfly.' Those of us who had seen his
work in the drawing class presided over by 'Bully' Wakeman at Portora
were not likely to be deceived in the matter....

"His college life was mainly one of study; in addition to working for