Both Sir William and Lady Wilde busied themselves in collecting folk-lore. Wilde in boyhood travelled with his father to visit ruins and gather superstitions. His childhood must have had a plentiful mythology. Wilde and his brother were not excluded from the extravagant conversations of their mother's _salon_. Any precocity they showed was encouraged, if only by that curious atmosphere of agile cleverness. There are no valuable anecdotes of his childhood, but it is said that his mother always thought that Oscar was less brilliant than her elder son. When he was eleven he was sent to the Portora Royal School at Enniskillen, where he behaved well, did not particularly distinguish himself, did not play games, read a great deal, and was very bad at mathematics. In the holidays he travelled with his mother in France. Leaving Portora in 1873, he went with a scholarship to Trinity College, Dublin, where, in 1874, he won the Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek. In the same year he left Dublin for Oxford, matriculating at Magdalen and taking a scholarship. In 1876 he took a First Class in Classical Moderations, always a sufficient proof of sound learning, and, in 1878, he took a First Class in Literae Humaniores. In 1877 he travelled in Italy and went to Greece with Professor Mahaffy. This experience had great influence on his attitude towards art, filled the classical dictionary with life, and made the figures of mythology so luminous that he was tempted to overwork them. In 1878 he read the Newdigate Prize Poem in the Sheldonian Theatre. On leaving Oxford he brought to London a small income, a determination to conquer the town, and a reputation as a talker. He took rooms in the Adelphi. He adopted a fantastic costume to emphasize his personality, and, perhaps to excuse it, spoke of the ugliness of modern dress. In three years he had won the recognition of Punch, which, thenceforward, caricatured him several times a month. In 1881 he published his first book, a volume of poems, discussed in the next chapter. Five editions of it were immediately sold. His costume and identification with the aesthetic movement of that time determined his selection as a lecturer in America. The promoters of his tour there were, however, anxious to help not the aesthetic movement but the success of a play that laughed at it. He went to America in 1882, and again in 1883, on the latter occasion to see the production of _Vera_. On his return from the first visit he went to Paris, where he finished _The Duchess of Padua_, which was not published till 1908. In 1891 it was produced in New York, when twenty copies were printed for the actors and for private circulation. It is likely that in 1883, while in Paris, he began _The Sphinx_, upon which he worked at various periods before its publication in 1894.