It will be seen from this that Oscar Wilde was in some danger of suffering from
excessive popularity and unmerited renown. Indeed if he had loved athletic
sports, hunting and shooting instead of art and letters, he might have been the
selected representative of aristocratic England.

In addition to his own popular qualities a strong current was sweeping him to
success. He was detested by the whole of the middle or shop-keeping class which
in England, according to Matthew Arnold, has "the sense of conduct--and has but
little else." This class hated and feared him; feared him for his intellectual
freedom and his contempt of conventionality, and hated him because of his light-
hearted self-indulgence, and also because it saw in him none of its own sordid
virtues. "Punch" is peculiarly the representative of this class and of all
English prejudices, and "Punch" jeered at him now in prose, now in verse,
week after week. Under the heading, "More Impressions" (by Oscuro Wildgoose)
I find this:

"My little fancy's clogged with gush,
My little lyre is false in tone,
And when I lyrically moan,
I hear the impatient critic's 'Tush!'

"But I've 'Impressions.' These are grand!
Mere dabs of words, mere blobs of tint,
Displayed on canvas or in print,
Men laud, and think they understand.

"A smudge of brown, a smear of yellow,
No tale, no subject,--there you are!
Impressions!--and the strangest far
Is--that the bard's a clever fellow."