Suffer me one more correction.  Your writer describes the author of the brilliant fantastic lecture on ‘The Modern Actor’ as a protege of mine.  Allow me to state that my acquaintance with Mr. John Gray is, I regret to say, extremely recent, and that I sought it because he had already a perfected mode of expression both in prose and verse.  All artists in this vulgar age need protection certainly.  Perhaps they have always needed it.  But the nineteenth-century artist finds it not in Prince, or Pope, or Patron, but in high indifference of temper, in the pleasure of the creation of beautiful things, and the long contemplation of them, in disdain of what in life is common and ignoble and in such felicitous sense of humour as enables one to see how vain and foolish is all popular opinion, and popular judgment, upon the wonderful things of art.  These qualities Mr. John Gray possesses in a marked degree.  He needs no other protection, nor, indeed, would he accept it.—­I remain, Sir, your obedient servant, Oscar Wilde.

LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN:  AN EXPLANATION

(St. James’s Gazette, February 27, 1892.)

To the Editor of the St. James’s Gazette.

Sir,—­Allow me to correct a statement put forward in your issue of this evening to the effect that I have made a certain alteration in my play in consequence of the criticism of some journalists who write very recklessly and very foolishly in the papers about dramatic art.  This statement is entirely untrue and grossly ridiculous.

The facts are as follows.  On last Saturday night, after the play was over, and the author, cigarette in hand, had delivered a delightful and immortal speech, I had the pleasure of entertaining at supper a small number of personal friends; and as none of them was older than myself I, naturally, listened to their artistic views with attention and pleasure.  The opinions of the old on matters of Art are, of course, of no value whatsoever.  The artistic instincts of the young are invariably fascinating; and I am bound to state that all my friends, without exception, were of opinion that the psychological interest of the second act would be greatly increased by the disclosure of the actual relationship existing between Lady Windermere and Mrs. Erlynne—­an opinion, I may add, that had previously been strongly held and urged by Mr. Alexander.

As to those of us who do not look on a play as a mere question of pantomime and clowning psychological interest is everything, I determined, consequently, to make a change in the precise moment of revelation.  This determination, however, was entered into long before I had the opportunity of studying the culture, courtesy, and critical faculty displayed in such papers as the Referee, Reynolds’, and the Sunday Sun.