Oscar Wilde.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XIX, Issue 5952, 23 May 1894, Page 3

Oscar Wilde.

Mr Oscar Wilde has been giving some " New Views " to a representative of the Theatre on poets, prose writers, Puritans, prayer, and ever so many other subjects. " A glorious passion is poetry," said Mr Wilde, who confessed that Keats is his favorite; "the greatest artist of them all." Shelley, however, is "a magnificent genius," but is " too ethereal." He has no regard for the Brownings—there is too much effort with them. He likes Ford and Marlowe, and Jonson and Massinger, and the Elizabethan dramatists generally ; but he does not rave over Shakespeare. Milton, in Mr Wilde's opinion, is "sometimes heavy;" but Paradise Lost" is " undoubtedly the grandest organ music wc have." " Very sober "is Thomson. " The life and fate of Chatterton is the most tremendous tragedy in history." Wordsworth is sometimes fine, but, as a whole, " The Excursion" is "decidedly tedious." is "a supreme artist." "The music of Swinburne is perfect." " What all-seeing eyes William Morris has I" Austin Dobson is "very delightful"—"you must get Austin Dobson." ' "The other Austin is vulgar —•The Season' execrable." There is not enough fire in William Watson's poetry to boil a tea-kettle." j Among English novelists Mr Wilde pre-1 fers George Meredith. " The Egotist" is a terrible book for human nature. Every sentence tells—every line is an arrow in one's own soul." R. L. Stevenson he thinks very fine. Some people would rather have Rider Haggard; "that is because they are insane." The two are not to be compared. " Rider Haggard writes like a man playing footfall, and as long as he confines himself to blood and bruises he does well; but immediately he begins to moralise, he gets outside his natural sphere and becomes absurd." He is not enthusiastic over Scott. He is able to read Thackeray's " Esmond." Charlotte Bronte is " often quite charming." " Robert Elsmere " " everyone should read." Mr Wilde likes the Puritans " for their thoroughness ;" they are the only people he would burn. "They really deserve burning; it is a great honor for a man to burn him." Mr Wilde, it may surprise some to learn, reads theology every day ; " the history of theology is the history of madness." He much laments that religious literature is of so poor n quality. Dante is the only Christian writer of supreme merit. Wordsworth's was the religion of nature rather than the religion of Christ ; he is Pantheistic rather than Christian. ** Ido not quite believe in bringing children up on the Bible," Mr Wilde observed. "By the time they arrive at an age to appreciate the book it has lost, to them, much of its charm. Anyone taking up the Gospels for the first time about the age of 18 would be enchanted. • What a marvellous Personality !' they would exclaim ; ' what a remarkable story !'"