with self-praise. What will this professor of aesthetics make of it?

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 aesthetics 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.

It is to his credit that at first he tried to cut down expenses and live