do get some very poor wine nowadays in private houses. "What is the use of the lower classes unless they set us a good example?" "Divorces are made in heaven," "To have lost one parent is a misfortune, to have lost both looks like carelessness," and "I am only serious about my amusements," are samples taken haphazard of the good things in the play. It has been objected that the piece is improbable, but it was described by the author merely as "a trivial comedy for serious people." As a contributor to _The Sketch_ so aptly put it at the time, "Why carp at improbability in what is confessedly the merest bubble of fancy? Why not acknowledge honestly a debt of gratitude to one who adds so unmistakably to the gaiety of the nation?" The press were almost unanimous in their appreciation of the comedy. _The Athenæum's_ critic wrote, "The mantle of Mr Gilbert has fallen on the shoulders of Mr Oscar Wilde, who wears it in jauntiest fashion." And _The Times_ is responsible for the statement that "almost every sentence of the dialogue bristles with epigram of the now accepted pattern, the manufacture of this being apparently conducted by its patentee with the same facility as 'the butter-woman's rank to market.'" But more flattering still was the appreciation of the _Truth_ critic whose previous attitude to Wilde's work had been a hostile one. "I have not the slightest intention of seriously criticising Mr O. Wilde's piece at the St James's," he writes, under the heading of "The Importance Of Being Oscar," "as well might one sit down after dinner and attempt gravely to discuss the true inwardness of a _soufflé_. Nor, unfortunately, is it necessary to enter into details as to its wildly farcical plot. As well might one, after a successful display of fireworks in the back garden, set to work laboriously to analyse the composition of a Catherine Wheel. At the same time I wish to admit, fairly and frankly, that 'The Importance Of Being Earnest' amused me very much." It is, however, since the author's death that the great body of critics have emitted the opinion that the play is really an extremely clever piece of work and a valuable contribution to the English drama. So many pieces are apt to get _démodés_ in a few years, but now, twelve years after its production, "The Importance Of Being Earnest" is as fresh as ever, and does not date, as ladies say of their headgear. To compare the blatant nonsense that Mr Bernard Shaw foists on a credulous public as wit with the coruscating _bon mots_ of his dead compatriot, as seems to be the fashion nowadays, is to show a pitiful lack of intelligence and discernment; as well compare gooseberry wine to champagne, the fountains in Trafalgar Square to Niagara. PART III THE ROMANTIC DRAMAS "SALOMÉ"