The Baron, recommends anybody who revels in
_diablerie_, to begin it about half-past ten, and to finish it at one
sitting up; but those who do not so revel he advises either not to
read it at all, or to choose the daytime, and take it in homoeopathic
doses. The portrait represents the soul of the beautiful Ganymede-like
_Dorian Gray_, whose youth and beauty last to the end, while his soul,
like JOHN BROWN'S, "goes marching on" into the Wilderness of Sin. It
becomes at last a devilled soul. And then _Dorian_ sticks a knife into
it, as any ordinary mortal might do, and a fork also, and next morning
"Lifeless but 'hideous' he lay,"
while the portrait has recovered the perfect beauty which it possessed
when it first left the artist's easel. If OSCAR intended an allegory,
the finish is dreadfully wrong. Does he mean that, by sacrificing
his earthly life, _Dorian Gray_ atones for his infernal sins, and so
purifies his soul by suicide? "Heavens! I am no preacher," says the
Baron, "and perhaps OSCAR didn't mean anything at all, except to give
us a sensation, to show how like BULWER LYTTON'S old-world style he
could make his descriptions and his dialogue, and what an easy thing
it is to frighten the respectable _Mrs. Grundy_ with a Bogie." The
style is decidedly Lyttonerary. His aphorisms are Wilde, yet forced.
Mr. OSCAR WILDE says of his story, "it is poisonous if you like, but
you cannot deny that it is also perfect, and perfection is what we
artists aim at.
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