



Produced by Winston Smith. Images provided by The Internet Archive.





                              OSCAR WILDE


                 This Edition consists of 500 copies.
                   Fifty copies have been printed on
                           hand-made paper.


                     [Illustration: 'HOW UTTER.']




                              Oscar Wilde

                                A STUDY

                          FROM THE FRENCH OF

                              ANDRÉ GIDE

               WITH INTRODUCTION, NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

                                  BY

                             STUART MASON



                                Oxford

                          THE HOLYWELL PRESS

                                 MCMV


                   *       *       *       *       *


                                  TO

                         DONALD BRUCE WALLACE,

                             OF NEW YORK,

                  IN MEMORY OF A VISIT LAST SUMMER TO

                           BAGNEUX CEMETERY,

                     A PILGRIMAGE OF LOVE WHEN WE

              WATERED WITH OUR TEARS THE ROSES AND LILIES

                         WITH WHICH WE COVERED

                           THE POET'S GRAVE.



              Oxford,

                 September, 1905.




[The little poem on the opposite page first saw the light in the pages
of the _Dublin University Magazine_ for September, 1876. It has not
been reprinted since. The Greek quotation is taken from the _Agamemnon_
of Æschylos, l. 120. ]



Αἴλινον, αἴινον εἰπὲ,

Τὸ δ᾽ ευ̉ νικάτω

    O well for him who lives at ease
      With garnered gold in wide domain,
      Nor heeds the plashing of the rain,
    The crashing down of forest trees.

    O well for him who ne'er hath known
      The travail of the hungry years,
      A father grey with grief and tears,
    A mother weeping all alone.

    But well for him whose feet hath trod
      The weary road of toil and strife,
      Yet from the sorrows of his life
    Builds ladders to be nearer God.


              Oscar F. O'F. Wills Wilde.


    _S. M. Magdalen College,_

         _Oxford._



                                 NOTE.

M. Gide's Study of Mr. Oscar Wilde (perhaps the best account yet
written of the poet's latter days) appeared first in _L'Ermitage_, a
monthly literary review, in June, 1902. It was afterwards reprinted
with some few slight alterations in a volume of critical essays,
entitled _Prétextes_, by M. Gide. It is now published in English for
the first time, by special arrangement with the author.

S. M.


                               CONTENTS.

                                                          PAGE

  Poem by Oscar Wilde....................................  xi

  Introductory...........................................   1

  Inscription on Oscar Wilde's Tombstone.................  11

  Letters from M. André Gide.............................  12

  Oscar Wilde: from the French of André Gide.............  15

  Sonnet 'To Oscar Wilde,' by Augustus M. Moore..........  89

  List of Published Writings of Oscar Wilde..............  93

  Bibliographical Notes on The English Editions.......... 107



                        LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

                                                          PAGE

  Cartoon: 'How Utter'.......................... Frontispiece
    (From a Cartoon published by Messrs. Shrimpton at
       Oxford about 1880. By permission of Mr. Hubert
       Giles, 23 Broad St., Oxford).

 