circle; "Leonardo himself might have said that."

The whole scene seemed to me affected and middle-class, untidy, too, with an un-
English note about it of shiftlessness; the aesthetic dresses were extravagant,
the enthusiasms pumped up and exaggerated. I was glad to leave quietly.

It was on this visit to Lady Wilde, or a later one, that I first heard of that
other poem of Oscar, "The Harlot's House," which was also said to have been
written in Paris. Though published in an obscure sheet and in itself
commonplace enough it made an astonishing stir. Time and advertisement had been
working for him. Academic lectures and imitative poetry alike had made him
widely known; and, thanks to the small body of enthusiastic admirers whom I have
already spoken of, his reputation instead of waning out had grown like the Jinn
when released from the bottle.

The fuglemen were determined to find something wonderful in everything he did,
and the title of "The Harlot's House," shocking Philistinism, gave them a
certain opportunity which they used to the uttermost. On all sides one
was asked: "Have you seen Oscar's latest?" And then the last verse would be
quoted:--"Divine, don't ye think?"

"And down the long and silent street,
The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet,
Crept like a frightened girl."

In spite of all this extravagant eulogy Oscar Wilde's early plays and poems,
like his lectures, were unimportant. The small remnant of people in England who
really love the things of the spirit were disappointed in them, failed to find
in them the genius so loudly and so arrogantly vaunted.