That is almost standard procedure. But is there any other case in literary history quite so dramatic, quite so sensational as Wilde's? Here is no mere rise from neglect to recognition or even, as in the case of Ibsen, from "enemy of the people" to national hero. Here it is from literally unspeakable infamy to public honor.

At the time of Wilde's disgrace, Germany continued to hold his writings in absurd overestimation and France received the exile with a shrug. What England is doing now is less reassessing the man of letters. than simply confessing a brutal wrong. Even in this centenary year, few are likely to maintain that Wilde was a really major writer. A great deal of his prose and verse is feebly pretentious. Not a few of his sayings are foolish and shabby. What can and must be said is that at his rare best he is sui generis and unequaled. A bright undergraduate once supplied me with a fine definition: "An epigram is a platitude in the making." But Wilde's greatness as a maker of phrases is best demonstrated by the fact that not even endless repetition of some of them can turn them into platitudes. But it is still true that those who think of him this year will be thinking more of a victim than of a genius.

Sometimes, it seems to me that at this particular moment we are almost too inclined to take a "reasonable" attitude toward homosexuality. We risk suggesting to young aspirants that it is really a sort of short-cut to artistic sensibility, and

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you will find highbrow critics solemnly discussing why (not whether, but why) it is the most suitable modern expression of the erotic impulse. In order to convince oneself that even this sort of nonsense is preferable to the terrified brutality of the Victorians, one need only read Son of Oscar Wilde (Dutton, $3.75), by Vyvyan Holland, as the younger and only surviving one of the two boys has called himself. Macauley's famous remark that there is nothing more absurd than the British public in one of its fits of morality would be à propos here if "absurd" were not so inadequate a word. Almost the whole of that public seemed insanely sadistic and ready to annihilate not only Wilde and his children but anyone who offered to do him any kindness.

The outburst leaves one still wondering just what was its motivation. Some will undoubtedly suggest that it was the result of the public's own suppressed homosexuality; others. somewhat more convincingly, that it was terror at the sudden emergence into public view of something of which the public was as terrified as it was ignorant; still others, that this same public seized upon a deadly weapon with which to attack the whole new movement in thought in which Wilde and his fellow esthetes were playing at the moment a conspicuous part. In any event, the English public put on a ghastly performance.

Even Kinseyism is preferablewhich is not to say that a reasonable attitude wouldn't be even better yet!

Reprinted by permission from THE NEW LEADER New York.

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