Here he is, the flower of English University training, a winner of
some of the chief academic prizes without any worthy means of earning
a livelihood, save perchance by journalism. And journalism in England
suffers from the prevailing anarchy. In France, Italy, and Germany
journalism is a career in which an eloquent and cultured youth may
honourably win his spurs. In many countries this way of earning one's
bread can still be turned into an art by the gifted and high-minded;
but in England thanks in the main to the anonymity of the press
cunningly contrived by the capitalist, the journalist or modern
preacher is turned into a venal voice, a soulless Cheapjack paid to
puff his master's wares. Clearly our "Professor of Æsthetics and
Critic of Art" is likely to have a doleful time of it in nineteenth
century London.

Oscar had already dipped into his little patrimony, as we have seen,
and he could not conceal from himself that he would soon have to live
on what he could earn--a few pounds a week. But then he was a poet and
had boundless confidence in his own ability. To the artist nature the
present is everything; just for to-day he resolved that he would live
as he had always lived; so he travelled first class to London and
bought all the books and papers that could distract him on the way:
"Give me the luxuries," he used to say, "and anyone can have the
necessaries."

In the background of his mind there were serious misgivings. Long
afterwards he told me that his father's death and the smallness of his
patrimony had been a heavy blow to him. He encouraged himself,
however, at the moment by dwelling on his brother's comparative
success and waved aside fears and doubts as unworthy.