“Now it was quite evident to me, as it was to Whistler and Beardsley, that Oscar knew no more about pictures[5] than anyone of his general culture and with his opportunities can pick up as he goes along.  He could be witty about Art, as I could be witty about engineering; but that is no use when you have to seize and hold the attention and interest of people who really love music and painting.  Therefore, Oscar was handicapped by a false start, and got a reputation[6] for shallowness and insincerity which he never retrieved until it was too late.

[Footnote 5:  I touched upon Oscar’s ignorance of art sufficiently I think, when I said in my book that he had learned all he knew of art and of controversy from Whistler, and that his lectures on the subject, even after sitting at the feet of the Master, were almost worthless.]

[Footnote 6:  Perfectly true, and a notable instance of Shaw’s insight.]

“Comedy:  the criticism of morals and manners viva voce, was his real forte.  When he settled down to that he was great.  But, as you found when you approached Meredith about him, his initial mistake had produced that ‘rather low opinion of Wilde’s capacities,’ that ‘deep-rooted contempt for the showman in him,’ which persisted as a first impression and will persist until the last man who remembers his esthetic period has perished.  The world has been in some ways so unjust to him that one must be careful not to be unjust to the world.

“In the preface on education, called ‘Parents and Children,’ to my volume of plays beginning with Misalliance, there is a section headed ‘Artist Idolatry,’ which is really about Wilde.  Dealing with ’the powers enjoyed by brilliant persons who are also connoisseurs in art,’ I say, ’the influence they can exercise on young people who have been brought up in the darkness and wretchedness of a home without art, and in whom a natural bent towards art has always been baffled and snubbed, is incredible to those who have not witnessed and understood it.  He (or she) who reveals the world of art to them opens heaven to them.  They become satellites, disciples, worshippers of the apostle.  Now the apostle may be a voluptuary without much conscience.  Nature may have given him enough virtue to suffice in a reasonable environment.  But this allowance may not be enough to defend him against the temptation and demoralization of finding himself a little god on the strength of what ought to be a quite ordinary culture.  He may find adorers in all directions in our uncultivated society among people of stronger character than himself, not one of whom, if they had been artistically educated, would have had anything to learn from him, or regarded him as in any way extraordinary apart from his actual achievements as an artist.  Tartufe is not always a priest.  Indeed, he is not always a rascal:  he is often a weak man absurdly credited with omniscience and perfection, and taking unfair advantages only because they are offered to him and he is too weak to refuse.  Give everyone his culture, and no one will offer him more than his due.’